Does Diversity in Entertainment Really Matter?

First off, I'm going to define these terms in the manner that I know them. I won't be pulling up Webster's, conducting any research, and I damn sure won't be pandering to anyone's narrative. If you want to hear the popular opinion then you clicked on the wrong article, and I'm sure that your echo chamber or safe space is only a few more clicks away.

Now, that that's out of the way let's dive into it.

Diversity, with regards to peoples, is a mixture of different races, colors, and ethnicities, all in one place. Sure one or two may not be represented, as I've never met any Native Americans here in Georgia, thanks to good ol' Andy Jackson, but diversity is not just a lack of a perceived majority.

What I'm getting at is that diversity does not mean lack of white people. It does not mean ninety percent Black and ten percent Hispanic. That is a gross lack of diversity. Believe me, it ain't that hard to walk into a room full of white people. I've done it countless times. But, walking into a room filled with Black faces? That's a rarity in most parts of this country. Walking into a room with two Asians, three White Guys and an Indian? Unheard of. But that's diverse.

And, I don't know about you but if I bought a variety pack of Lays Chips and it was ninety percent Sun Chips, I wouldn't call it diverse and unique, I'd call it bullshit and a rip-off.

No. Fuck, no. If the show is shitty, the show is shitty. And we all can agree both Lifetime and BET put out vast amounts of shitty original content. And I'm not racist for saying that. I watch television to be entertained, not to see Shaniqua crack jokes I don't understand and get the soul-sister message in. That's not for me. I don't like hip-hop culture, and I favor intellectualism. So BET is a massive turn-off. And Lifetime is just slightly less of a turn-off because from time to time they seem to be aware of how shit they are.

I don't know what other people consume entertainment for. But, I tend to be a literal kind of guy. I do it to be entertained. I'm not going to the movie theater with a checklist to make sure I get my social commentary from a superhero movie about a dude dressed like a fucking cat. If someone told me that they were trying to make a political statement with something so damn ridiculous, I'd feel outright offended.

I don't care if the people in the fucking movie are all CGI'd to be purple, if the story is good. It would raise some questions about what kind of drugs the creative department was on, but ultimately I'd feel happy I watched a good movie.

And I'm not saying we should go back to the Forties and make everything all white. That would get really boring, really quickly. I'm just tired of seeing people acting like filling a shitass movie with black people adds value to it. And then getting angry and calling you a racist when you call the movie shitty. This seems to be a rising genre. Overdone, cliched, horrible movies that only get greenlit because mediocre Black actors who have done two or three good movies are attached to them.

It warms my heart to see something like Get Out or Black Dynamite. Those movies are very decent in their own right. They feel like black people made decent movies, not like someone wrote a shitty screenplay and then filled the movie with black people to try to redeem it. And anyone can take handouts so fuck the latter scenario, I'll celebrate the first.

My final view on the matter is that this whole forcing diversity shit is for the birds. If black people want to hang out with Lithuanians they will. And they'll have Zrazy with collard greens on the side. I've been in enough diverse circles to know that people don't really give two shits about your skin color so long as you share something they're passionate about. And if me dissing BET wasn't enough of a clue, I hung out with the Asians and the metalheads coming up. It only took one afternoon of 106 and Park to know I hated that whole damn channel.

And if we're going to be completely honest here. I don't give a rat's ass about what race my friends are, so long as they're not scumbags. I don't care what color the star of the movie I'm watching is, so long as it's not boring. I don't give a damn about who the fuck is on my TV shows so long as I want to turn them back on next week. But some people aren't' like that. To each his own.