Like most of corporate America, Hollywood has fallen prey to the “DEI” delusion in recent years. Far from being a good thing, corporate “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” measures generally represent a poisonous brew of racism, leftism and anti-Americanism. The sooner this fad fades from the scene, the better.
In the Telegraph, U.S. Editor Nick Allen sees signs that the entertainment industry is moving back toward sanity:
Hollywood is suffering “diversity fatigue”, insiders have said, after four leading inclusion executives left high-profile roles in the space of 10 days.
The departures came at three major studios and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Commentators in Hollywood suggested it showed “diversity fatigue” and it led to complaints that the entertainment industry was not fully committed to implementing inclusivity policies.
We can only hope.
All four departing diversity executives were black women and Variety, the entertainment industry bible, described the moment as a “mass exodus of black women from senior leadership posts across Hollywood”.
Actress Yvette Nicole Brown wrote on Twitter: “I guess all those black boxes after George Floyd was murdered were for nothing.”
That was a reference to the black squares people and companies posted on social media in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
I don’t think George Floyd was murdered, given that he had three times a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system when he died while waiting for an ambulance. But, be that as it may, why the Floyd incident should have sparked a racist, anti-white movement in Hollywood is a mystery.
Among those leaving was Disney’s chief diversity officer Latondra Newton.
Her job was to produce entertainment that “reflects a global audience and sustain a welcoming and inclusive workplace for everyone”.
Disney has produced one bomb after another, losing something like $900 million on its last eight releases. Disney’s losing streak is generally attributed to its left-wing, “woke” ideology. Are companies still trying to fulfill their legal duty to make money for their shareholders? If so, heads needed to roll at Disney.
Variety reported that “when corporations tighten their money belts, DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] initiatives are often first on the chopping block”.
Which they should be, given their generally malign influence.
The latest Hollywood Diversity Report by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), showed that in 2022, racial, ethnic and gender diversity among movie actors, directors and writers for cinema releases went back to what it was in 2019.
The report said: “The representation of women and people of colour in the film industry had improved for each of the past three years.
“But in 2022, diversity in several key roles generally returned to 2019 levels.”
The horror! As I recall, films were plenty diverse in 2019. But isn’t there something else going on? I almost never watch television, but over the 4th of July I spent several days with my oldest daughter and her family in Texas, where we often had the television on, always tuned to sports. What was striking to me is that white people have been virtually abolished from commercials. Around 2/3 of Americans are white, but–impressionistically, I didn’t try to count–it looked to me as though fewer than 25% of the people we saw in TV commercials were white. That is just plain weird, and can only be the result of the race-based ideology of DEI.
Ana-Christina Ramón, director of the UCLA department that produces the diversity report, said: “The fear is that diversity is something that is temporary or could be easily cut at any point in either theatrical or streaming.”
Actual diversity is, of course, a fact that is reflected in all of our entertainment media. “Diversity,” as Ms. Ramon evidently uses the term, is an ideology that tries to use race as a wedge to advance left-wing theories. If this “diversity” comes to an end, it can only be a good thing.
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