Racist Casting and Chance Racisim

[lovingpenfull]

There are 3 parts to this thread:

1) our star Amano Singh

2) the movie

3) and the story of unintended 'racism' in the restaurant

First, our star. Amano Singh is a big, burley, black British fellow whom I have been running into for a while now. Actually he is mixed; his mother is Finish and his father is Nigerian. I met him in the mountains and have been running around with him off and on for a while now. Madcap this guy, huge beard, full of life, speaks his mind, a bright spirt and a good friend. He is also a convert to the Sikh religion, and so wears a turban and carries as sword. Interesting guy.

Next, the moive. I am hanging out with Amano here in Delhi, met up with him again, listened to his tales, watch him work the women, me tagging along like Sal Paradise watching and learning. There then were peppered about the Parhganj, foreigner, area flyers anouncing a British flim to be shot here requesting non-Indian extras. Free food and 1,500 Rupees, 30USD, a day to stand around in the background; three days shooting.

You send your picture to them via email and they give you the details thereafter. I just got my confirmation email, but Amano hasn't gotten his. Amano is a brick layer in London and has always had trouble getting work for being black. He has been in India for a while and his funds are low and he needs this money. But they must have decided that he just wasn't Western enough for this film. The filming is in a few days, so they still might contact him, but it seems like he has been left out because he doesn't fit the profile.

Amano and I talk and joke about all sorts of things, sometimes racism among them. He has told me stories of the racism he has encountred throughout his life, and I've seen some examples of it myself here, and now this movie business.

This set me to thinking, and made me recall my own part in an unintended bit of racism. I was working as a host in a restaurant at one point in the States; I opened the door, took names, sat patrons. Once, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day no less, there was working in the booth section of the restaurant our only black waitress. The thing when your a host in any American chain restaurant is seat the customer, or 'guest' as we were told to refer to them, in as little time as possible, but at the same time the servers can't get more than so many tables sat in their section at a time. When 'guests' come in it is a bit like the hot potato game, find a place to get rid of them as soon as possible. When there is an opening in the restuarant throw them in there.

Well, on this evening in comes a black couple, African American couple if you like, at some point and the next server open is Jackie, we'll just call her Jackie, I don't remember her name, it seems like that was her name, the black waitress. So we seat the couple in her section. I am particularly sensitive to these things, I reckon, and I noticed it right away that it might seem strange that we sat a black couple in the only black server's section. Then later, some more black folks came in and requested to sit in a booth, so that was Jackie's section. So now, of Jackie's five tables, two have black occupants, and no other section in the restaurant has black folk in it. A third group of African Americans come in, and Jackie's section is next! We have to seat them there. So now it looks like we are segregating all the black guests in the black server's section! It was only at this point that the other hosts realized this and I told them I noticed it before but was on names, standing at the door and taking names, not seating, and so didn't say anything about it and was busy, but I was aware of this and embarrased. All on Martin Luther King day as well, as though we were ultra racist and doing it out of spite or something.

No comments were made to effect that we were putting all the black people with the black server or that we were racist, but I wondered if anyone but us hosts precieved this, if the guests or server in question noticed this. I suppose they did but didn't say anything. But it was all coincidental, we opperated on a rotation and it just happend to work out like that.

So, this makes me wonder to what extent racism in just a chance incident, and therefore not racisim but only racisim in the mind's of those that feel catagorized and prejudged and descriminated against and to what extent it is actually racisim.

I don't mean to suggest that a large percentage of racism is imagined, in fact even if it is imagined to some degree, there is still for a very sound reason that the suspicion is there: historically there have been such horrific, criminal incidents of racism towards those of African decent in American and elsewhere in the world and it continues today. But sometimes, it looks like something, but it's not.

So, are these casting people discriminating against our star, Amao? I think they are. There is no reason that I should receive the exta-confirmation before him; he doesn't fit the profile, he spoils the illusion that they want to create in this movie, the illusion of an all white England, full of blonde hair blue eyed blushing youths who gush about some soupy love mush while parading themselves about India on some trip or something.

You might suspect that I am not going to do the movie out of protest; but I am. I need the money and so does Amano. I am going to give him some of it and we have decided that he'll come along with me anyway as though he had been confirmed and make them verbalize in front of everybody why they don't want him. I have a feeling they'll cave and make him a bouncer in this bar scene we are doing.

Look out for me and Amano in the background of a British flick called 'Losing Gemma' out in a year or so.