Tyler Perry Says “Reverse Racism” Is Real And Lee Daniels Wants Black Hollywood To “Stop Complaining”
Just a couple of weeks after Denzel Washington threw down the gauntlet of controversial responses to #OscarsSoWhite and later made controversial comments on the topic of colorism, two more titans of black Hollywood have seemingly accepted the challenge to outdo him.
Lee Daniels, who recently came under fire for stating that he chose to not “embrace racism,” continued his trip down the road of color blindness recently in an interview with the New York Times.
When asked about the #OscarsSoWhite campaign and a lack of diversity in Hollywood, Daniels took an openly condescending approach.
“Go out and do the work. Oscars so white! So what? Do your work. Let your legacy speak and stop complaining, man. Are we really in this for the awards?,” he said.
“If I had thought that way—that the world was against me—I wouldn’t be here now,” he continued. “These whiny people that think they’re owed something are incomprehensible and reprehensible to me. I don’t expect acknowledgment or acceptance from white America. I’m going to be me.”
One of the many, many interesting things about Daniels’ comments is that they seem to contradict the values he’s shown in the past. Not only has he played an active role in hiring many black actors in his productions, but he also cast a white woman as the lead in his latest series for what appears to be nothing more than the acceptance from white America he claims he isn’t looking for.
Also on the road to color-blindness, Tyler Perry accused many of his own critics of practicing “reverse racism” after they called him out after assembling an all-white cast for a TLC drama series called “Too Close To Home.”
“That’s totally reverse racism, because it was coming from African-American people,” said Perry, according to Page Six.
“I don’t know if it was because they thought I should only be giving jobs to black people. Well, I think that’s ridiculous. If you look at the hundreds of black people I’ve given jobs to and even the ones I’ve made millionaires, people of color, I just think it’s unfair.”
Apparently, Perry’s travels have lead him to adopt a new worldview where race isn’t nearly as important when he was making movies full of black actors.
“I’m just finding out more as I travel the country and world, the more I meet people, we’re all the same,” he said. “We all got the same dramas. So I’m not seeing color as much as I did anymore in the sense of our stories. Our stories are so similar.”
Perry is correct. He has the right to cast whoever he wants in his productions. But his critics also have the right to comment on the surprise of seeing him go from mostly casting people of color for more than a decade to suddenly casting mostly white people.
Also, reverse racism isn’t a thing. Even a teenager with a Tumblr can tell you that.