By Laine A. Wood
The September meeting for JASNA North Carolina proved to be an interesting one. The event was advertised on the main Jane Austen Society of North America Facebook page and quickly picked up traction and attention resulting in record attendance at the meeting on Sunday, as well as some thoughtful conversation.
Damianne Scott, or Dami as she is called, was the guest speaker for the event and brings to the table her unique perspective and experiences of being a woman of color who enjoys Jane Austen, among other Regency authors. Dami’s discussion was informative and thought-provoking, and generated a plethora of discussion amongst the attendees.
Dami laid the ground for the topic by defining white supremacy and how it lends itself to racism followed by colorism, which is racism within an ethnic group. With this knowledge, we were led to understand the application of colorism within Hollywood, most notably in series such as Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte.
Ms. Scott explained the history of casting black actors in specific roles, usually for characters that are non-threatening and non-competitive with their white counterparts, and these roles usually portray characters that have lesser roles or are controversial or cliche. Additionally, Dami explained that the darker the skin color the more stereotyped the character. As the 20th century gave way to the 21st century, diversity in roles has increased, but only to the degree that lighter-skinned actors of color are cast, which is the epitome of colorism. Colorism in Hollywood is not just limited to African Americans. The movie Crazy Rich Asians was cast solely by lighter-skinned Asian actors.
While shows like Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte place black characters in roles and lifestyles that people of color can get excited about, the application of colorism dampens this enthusiasm with a cloud of racism and discrimination. Hollywood’s subversion in this is both seen and felt amongst those it seeks to marginalize. Damianne’s talk brought attention to this issue as well as considerations towards other groups who are affected by colorism as it applies to those of mixed race, and those impacted by colonialism, and challenged us to consider our own biases moving forward.
The meeting concluded with several break-out rooms to discuss various topics under the colorism umbrella.
Recommendations for Further exploration
In this meeting, the chat had a robust conversation with resource-sharing and recommendations. Here are a few highlights:
- Our speaker Damianne recommended two books – Nella Larsen’s Passing and Dorothy West’s The Wedding – as good explorations of colorism on the African American community
- The book Reel inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (2016) by Nancy Wang Yuen covers some of these same topics we explored in our meeting. Yuen is a sociologist who put a lot of research (interviewing actors of colour) into her project.
- Movie recommendations were shared, including Mr. Malcolm’s List and Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Brandy starring, as examples of colorblind and diverse casting.
- An Austen-related recommendation was also made: An Australian theater group did a production of Mansfield Park where Fanny Price is biracial and explores what that does to the story. You can learn more here: https://www.24carrotproductions.com/mansfield-park
Up Next
Next month, we’ll be having our Virtual Book Club, reading Claudia Gray’s The Murder of Mr. Wickham (a great spooky season read!); you can learn more and sign up here.