America Behind the Color Line (38 page)

ALICIA KEYS
How It’s Done

I have ambitions to do a lot of things. I have ambitions to be successful behind the scenes as well as onstage and in the recording studio. I started my recording career as a producer and a writer, like Quincy Jones. He’s an idol of mine. My visions for my future include writing scores for movies and the theater, and producing films—doing things that might be beyond the obvious next move. I’m open to a lot of possibilities. I would love to produce a film about Angela Davis or Lena Horne, or star in a film about Lena Horne. I like Lena Horne very much. She’s a goddess.

The people behind the camera tend to have the control. I’m not a puppet. I want to have control, especially over my own career and decisions about the people I work with. I’ve always claimed control over my creative work. I want to learn and know about everything that’s going on.

I think Hollywood is more open now to our people, in terms of making it. In certain circumstances, opportunity is always open to us. If you’re a ballplayer, hey, you can make it. If you’re a singer, hey, you can make it. Now, if you want to be a doctor, hmmm, maybe. If you want to be a politician, maybe. But I feel that Hollywood is definitely becoming more open. And I think it’s up to us to make sure that Hollywood continues to open the spectrum of possibilities to our people.

This world was based on racism. It’s also always been a part of Hollywood and it’s not easy to negate it, although it’s diminishing some. Black people are definitely becoming more accepted. We’re fighting harder and we’re in better positions. But there are more fights to be fought. We haven’t even scratched the surface.

In my career I’ve experienced racism, I’ve experienced sexism, I’ve experienced ageism. There’s a lot of “isms” I’ve experienced, but it doesn’t stop me. And it won’t stop me.

In certain circumstances, for some reason, people tend to go toward a lighter-skinned kind of thing, and that’s almost thought of as natural beauty. But I personally disagree. There is so much beauty and richness in dark skin. I don’t know if some people get that. The bias toward lighter-skinned women is a form of racism in the industry. It does exist. I feel it does. I don’t think that’s how it has to be, and I will not accept that, no. Black men of all different shades have become superstars. I’m not into perpetuating stereotypes. I think we can break those stereotypes.

NIA LONG
Life Purpose

I was born in Brooklyn. My dad is a poet, an educator, and a historian. He’s a deep brother. He loves black people; he loves being part of the crusade. My mom is a painter and an educator. She wanted me to have the freedom to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it—to explore the things that made me happy.

The word “Nia” in Swahili means “life purpose.” It means recognizing that each of us possesses a divine purpose and that we are responsible for developing our potential. It’s heavy to walk around with that consciousness, but both my parents were committed to raising a daughter who was aware.

When I was two years old, my parents divorced. When I was four, my mom and I moved to Iowa City so she could enter a master’s program in fine arts at the University of Iowa. We lived in Iowa City until I was seven. I had dashikis and a huge Angela Davis Afro, and my mom was such a hippie. I was able to go with what was in my heart, explore acting, and deal with the rejection when I didn’t get the part. I knew that when I got home it would be cool, because my mother wasn’t putting the pressure on me to achieve greatness. She just said to me, if this is what you love, then go for it. It was all about being who we were in this midwestern white corn country, and it was great. I have good memories of that time. I should make a movie about it and play the Fresh Princess of Iowa City.

We left Iowa for Los Angeles because my mom was planning to marry her boyfriend there. She dumped the guy but we ended up staying. When we got to South Central L.A., our new home, I was like, wow, we’re in the ghetto. It was actually a lower-middle-class neighborhood, on 54th Street and St. Andrews Place. A lot of the gangs are based over there, east of Crenshaw.

I could deal with South Central L.A., but fitting in was a different matter. I didn’t fit in with the girls whose big brother might have been a gangster or drug dealer or living the street life. I didn’t fit in with the light-skinned girls that were more mulatto-looking, because I didn’t have long hair, I didn’t have straight hair, and I didn’t have light skin. I’m a black woman. Both of my parents are very culturally conscious. I come from a huge, mixed ancestry; my great-grandfather was white. But looking at me, you go, oh, she’s a black woman. You don’t go, oh, one of her parents must be white, the way you would with a mulatto. It was difficult for me through high school because I couldn’t really grasp who I was. I used to end up fighting all the time. The girls would pick on me because I was not afraid to speak my mind, and I probably spoke up too much at times.

It just got to a point where I discovered myself as an artist. After that, I was able to represent so many brown-skinned women who never before had someone they could look to and say, that’s my life, that’s my voice; God, I’m kind of like her. I know what she’s talking about, because I’m not a hard-core street girl but I’m also not a flighty, ditzy girl. These women know I’m going to tell it like it is. I’m going to call it like I see it. And if it gets me in trouble, then I have to deal with the consequences. But I’m never going to sacrifice myself for anyone else or for this business.

Black women are probably the most intimidating species that God has ever created. We have so much historical baggage that it’s become innate. It’s in us. It’s who we are. It’s our essence. We are beautiful, we are smart, we are strong, and we can appear threatening when we speak our minds. We are also vulnerable, compassionate, and sensitive. Maybe this is why dark-complexioned black women have a harder time making it in Hollywood than light-complexioned black women do. Most white people can identify across the color line with that light-complexioned black woman.

The same imbalance holds between dark-complexioned black men and really black women in the availability of roles. Either the parts black men get are written for them, or whoever is producing or writing the movie says from the start, that’s who we want. There are many white women in Hollywood with the authority to say, put him in the movie. Perhaps black women have less of a mystique in the white culture than black men, who are still the white woman’s forbidden fruit.

Each black man who is a star has a unique position in Hollywood. There’s one Wesley Snipes, one Denzel Washington, one Laurence Fishburne. And I don’t want to say it’s easier for Chris Tucker, Bernie Mac, and Cedric the Entertainer because they’re comedians. They all bring something different to the table. But in reality, the black movies making $100 million are mostly comedies.

Chris Tucker and I go back a ways. I remember when we were making
Friday
and were driving to work. He had a beat-up Jetta with a piece of plastic on a broken window. I had a nice little BMW because I had been working for years, and he goes, girl, one day I’m going to be just like you; I’m going to have a car just like yours. And now he’s done it. Made $20 million, and I say good for him.

There’s a myth out there about opportunities for both female and male black actors, particularly in movies that aren’t necessarily comedies or action films. There might be a few who are allowed in—Denzel Washington and Halle Berry and Sidney Poitier—and how long ago did Sidney Poitier deserve a second Oscar or even an honorary one? He was the first black actor to win an Oscar, for
Lilies of the Field
in 1963. But he’s made more than seventy movies, including other classics and Oscar worthies, like
Blackboard Jungle, To Sir with Love, A Raisin in the Sun,
and
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
Halle, Denzel, Sidney Poitier, all honored at the Academy Awards. Thank God. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s a great moment of celebration for them, and very well deserved. But I don’t see how that alone will change anything.

The people who are my friends, who I adore, whose work I support, we’ve sort of grown up in this game together, from Halle Berry to Regina King to Vivica Fox and others. I remember when we were very young, seventeen, and we’d all be at the same auditions going up for the same jobs. As you grow and you start to see everyone taking their places, it’s a beautiful thing, but it’s hard to all be going for the same roles at the same time. Whether you’re black, white, purple, or yellow, it’s harder for women. I am a true believer in that.

Men can be gray and balding and they’re seen as being just sexier. In that sense, I do understand why there are more leading men than leading women on the so-called A-list. Older men can have younger women, and it’s totally fine; it’s sexy to a lot of people. There are very few movies where you see an older woman with a younger man. The minute a woman goes into menopause it’s like, oh well, you can only play a grandma now. Women have a shorter time span in their career to get in there and hit it good.

But as important as age is in determining opportunity for women in Hollywood, black women are discriminated against more because of race than because of gender, in my opinion. Ben Affleck just did a film with Jennifer Lopez, and she’s a woman of color. But black women are not immediately considered for those roles. When Matt Damon has a love interest, they don’t go, oh, let’s bring in Nia Long—we really like her work. They might say, well, sure, we’ll see her. They don’t want to say no, because they don’t want to feel like, oh my God, we said no to the black girl. So it’s like, oh, that’s a great idea, yeah, bring her in, because saying no from the start would weigh too heavy on their conscience.

I think their racism is totally unconscious. I understand how it works. I understand the machine. I understand that it might make more sense to put Cameron Diaz in a part for
Charlie’s Angels.
I think with the mind of a producer. All I ask as an artist is that we be given a chance, not as a favor or a mercy meeting or on account of a guilty conscience, but just so the game is fair. We don’t know what the Midwest will come out to see, after all, and I’m sick of playing it safe. Why do we have to play it safe? Why do the studios give us only $8-million budgets when they know these movies are still going to bring home the money? Why don’t we get the $40-, $50-, $100-million budgets for our films when they’ve been proven to score at the box office over and over?

People in Hollywood may say it’s about money, not race; that they’re not going to put black people in leads when they aren’t going to bring in $200 million. It is about the money. But very few black people are given the same level of opportunities that white artists are. Most blacks in Hollywood are exploited, making films with a budget of $10 million and being paid less than $1 million per lead while our white counterparts are making films for over $100 million.

I feel like there’s a committee that goes, all right, we’re going to let these couple of people in; yeah, let them go in. I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy, because it’s not organized on a conscious level. The way I have to swallow it is just to know it’s a subconscious thing; it comes from the historical events that directly tie into the color line issue. It’s the one-nigger syndrome. It used to be the scourge of black writers, and it still afflicts the black film industry. The studio lets one in and someone else is dead; their career is over.

I’m a hardworking woman, and if I were a white woman with the amount of blockbuster success films I’ve starred in, I’d probably be making at least $4 million more per film. And I don’t get paid $1 million a movie, so let’s be real about that too. I think black actors get paid less because our value is deemed lower than it would be if we had our own artistic independence. We don’t have studios. We are not running companies. We are producing our own movies on a certain scale; we have amazing directors and amazingly talented people. But we haven’t pulled together to really be in charge from top to bottom.

If black people could green-light films—$100-million romantic films with two black leads—a lot of the problems stemming from race could be solved. There are so many intelligent black people that haven’t had a chance to showcase their work, be they writers, actors, producers, or directors. We are the most diverse group of people on earth. We’re storytellers from all over the world. It’s about who we are in our entirety, not just about black people in America. We have black people from Africa, black people from the islands, black people from South America. We have black people mixed with Chinese coming over from Jamaica, but they’re still black. They have a whole other recipe for soul food to share with us.

The creation of a black studio would make room for black voices everywhere. It will take finding the right person—someone who is educated, has leadership qualities, isn’t racist, and knows how to deal with all types of people. I don’t think it’s a matter of having a black studio for only black people, where nobody white can work. That would be just as bad as what we have right now. We need to find a way to coexist in this society with equal amounts of respect and the same levels of opportunity.

Short of having a black studio as a point of embarkation, black actors can begin to change the system by saying no to really bad films. I know people have bills to pay. I know we have families to feed. A lot of us help our parents. I understand all that. But to be a responsible player in this business, you have to say no and hope that God blesses you with a big yes the next time around. If enough of us refuse to work in bad films, we might eventually be offered better-quality films.

There are those few people who are chosen to lead the crusade at certain moments, and they pass on the baton to the next person. But there’s always a juncture in that relay where it’s like, okay, stop; you’re done right now. We’re going to take over from here because we don’t want to lose our jobs. And when I say “we
,
” I’m talking about white people. The people who green-light the movies. I’m not prejudiced against white folks; I don’t have a problem. But I’m speaking the truth about the system.

Black people generate enormous amounts of money for the American economy. The crux of the matter, when it comes to sports, entertainment, and music, is that we bring the culture to America. There’s no longer pop music versus R&B music. We are R&B and we are pop. We are everything. We have crossed over. And it has crossed over to us. That’s what it boils down to, because our culture has been stolen from us and modified to be sort of the American culture, but it really has always been ours.

Being used in the Hollywood system is different if you’re black than if you’re white. In the last five years, I’d say, this industry has changed tremendously. You have the hip-hop world and you have the world of show business, or rather the world of Hollywood actors. And now we are all one thing. We are all commodities to white Hollywood. They know that if they put a rap star in the lead of a film, they’re going to get not just that rap audience, but also the sales on the sound track. I’m not knocking the rapper who can act. What I don’t like is the system. I don’t like the way it’s designed, because it’s no longer about how talented you are, what you’ve done, or how you’ve proven yourself.

What happens here to people is profound. I’ve had a successful career and I’m thankful for it. But it wasn’t easy getting there. The good thing about taking time off and stepping away is that I’ve been able to see clearly. When you’re in it, you can go around in the same cycle and just be there and be there and be there, and grow only a little as an artist. Then one day you look up and you go, God, I was used all these years, and I haven’t even reached my potential.

You’ve got to really believe in yourself and be able to cool yourself out and re-create yourself and come back stronger and better. You have to be centered. Otherwise, you can end up feeling like you’ve put in all that work and you have nothing. I try to continue to do the things that are good for me and the things I truly believe in. And then you go, well, damn, there’s five other girls that haven’t done half as much work as I’ve done, but we’re all being considered for the same part because we’re interchangeable. Oh yeah, Nia Long, she does great work. But if we hired X over here, we don’t have to pay her quite as much and then we’re also not putting Nia Long on a pedestal. She’s still fair game; she’s in the pool. And guess what. I’m not in the pool. I’m sitting on the side of the pool and I’m waiting till I find the right thing.