‘Hamilton’ Got Too Good So a Bunch of People Called It Racist
Hahahahahahahaha welcome to a story about people who don’t understand privilege or systemic racism. If you haven’t seen by now, yesterday Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s most recent Broadway hit, released an open casting call and a bunch of people freaked out about it. Why? The casting call specifically asked for non-white actors with rapping abilities, between 20 and 30, no experience required.
And then everyone screamed, that’s racist! No. I’m going to break this the f**k down for you. There is absolutely no thing as racism against white people. It doesn’t exist. You can’t have it. However, common buzzwords like ignorance, bigotry and prejudice are possible to be experienced for white people, but they’re not the same.
Moreover, racism is the benefit of one racial group via the vehicle of oppression of other racial groups. Prejudice operates on a personal level, but racism operates at both an individual and institutional level.
Hamilton and its Puerto Rican American creator pride themselves on its non-white actors, much in the same way that BET prides itself on being a safe place for black entertainment when, except for the occasional Tyler Perry flick, black actors are ignored or cast as novelties. White people have been deemed the dominant race since Western imperialism took root and as such, white people have been afforded systematic advantages socially, financially, institutionally, educationally, cinematically, so on and so forth. White people have the advantage whether we want to admit it or not.
Never once has there been an all-white cast of a musical where the mainstream held concern for lack of diversity. It’s when there’s diversity on the stage, and a call for more diversity, that us white people start to think… wait, why are my hundreds of years of advantages being stripped from me? I feel bare and raw. I’m scared. And in a scared fury, one lawyer tried to legitimize these complaints. Attorney Randolph McLaughlin of Newman Ferrara Law Firm makes the same trite argument that Stacey Dash has been trying to make about BET:
What if they put an ad out that said, ‘Whites only need apply? Why, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians would be outraged.
Yeah, we went over that. Furthermore, he adds:
You cannot advertise showing that you have a preference for one racial group over another.
Besides rumors of lawsuits for discriminatory action and union general council denying claims from producer Jeffery Seller that the casting call had been approved, Seller (a white man) doesn’t see anything wrong with it:
I stand by it and believe it to be legal.
Wonder if McLaughlin would be pursuing this case if actors as white as our Congress had been called.
Go ahead: You’re on the Internet, so you can look up the word “racism” or “racist” in an online dictionary. You’ll see that the author here is just wrong. What’s more, the legal issue here is whether there has been “discrimination”: That’s what the relevant laws typically prohibit, not “racism.” And of course there’s no doubt that white people can be discriminated against, just as people of any color can be. That’s what Congress wrote into federal law, for example, and that’s the way the Supreme Court has long interpreted that law.
*puts both hands over face* Go be white in a country where it’s not the dominant culture and see how privileged it feels to white. This piece is as misguided as feminists who think that misandry doesn’t exist.
Sorry, but blacks have to be some the most racist AND race-baiting people in the country. If they focused on the MAJOR problems of their own culture instead of constantly victimizing themselves over every imagined slight they have with whitey, they may contribute to society one day…
And articles like this one is why nobody visits this s**t site.
So whites are the only race that can be rasict?
So just found your facebook…yikes no wonder you hate whites… only black dudes would date something like you
Great article with great points. I just wish some white people could move past the white privilege and open their eyes to the struggles of other races. Just because slavery ended and is illegal does not mean discrimination and prejudice did as well.