What would white people say if Sidney Poitier played Julius Caesar..?

I'm white. I can't speak for anyone else, but I would say "Good job. Obviously the choice was based on ability instead of skin color", which, as most of you continually point out, shouldn't be a factor in casting a role.

Schools with all or mostly black students still put on The Miracle Worker and The Sound of Music. I have no problem with that even though those were both about actual white people.

Let the role go to whomever is most deserving. Skin color doesn't determine how deserving someone is, right?

I'm tired of seeing white people on the silver screen.

First, let me note that I am white. I am a white woman who goes to the theater to see probably a dozen films (if not more) in a given year, a white woman who readily consumes TV shows and series and often blogs/tweets about them. I love film. I love what Hollywood could be, but I must say that I don't love what it is, and that is a machine generating story after story in which the audience is asked to root for a white (usually male) hero over and over and over (and over) again. I'm tired. I'm tired of directors pretending that white actors are the default and that people of color are a distraction when it comes to filmmaking. I'm tired of black women in Hollywood being relegated to roles of slaves and "the help" over and over again. I'm tired of films convincing themselves that they are taking on something fresh and new, the likes of which the world has never seen, but in actuality adhering to tired tropes and stereotypes.

One example that comes to mind is Avatar, a "groundbreaking" film about aliens and humanity, which, underneath it all, is the same old White Savior story. But more recently is Lucy, the film starring Scarlett Johansson in which a woman named Lucy evolves and is able to use 100 percent of her brain's capacity after she unwittingly ingests a massive amount of drugs.

Lucy is about what humankind could be -- it's about possibilities. As Lucy's brainpower grows stronger and the volume of knowledge she is able to access increases, she delivers monologues about how little humans understand about death, existence, and the universe, mediating on time and history. The film likes to think of itself as reimagining everything that we think we know about humanity, and presents to us their vision of what the most evolved woman on earth looks like:

A blonde white woman.

See, I just can't get right with that.

You see, I was an anthropology major in high school and by the time I was 16 I'd learned all about Lucy (Australopithecus), the collection of bones found in Hadar and thought to have lived 3.2 million years ago, one of the oldest hominids we know of. Lucy the film doesn't try to hide how cute they thought they were being by naming the supreme evolved being in their film "Lucy" -- they show an ape-like creature crouched by a stream to illustrate just how far human beings have come, and say as much in the opening lines, depicting vast cities built up to show our progress. The original Lucy was not really an ape, though. She had small skull capacity like apes, but her skeleton shows she was bipedal and walked upright like humans. Hadar, by the way, is in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia.

So I guess what's sticking in my craw is the assertion that while human life originated in Africa -- a detail the film neatly skims over, placing the ape-like Lucy that Johansson sees in North America -- somehow the way we imagine the most evolved human being is blonde and white. Even more, when Lucy gets surges of knowledge in the film, her eyes flash brightly blue. Because blue eyes, we all know, are the universal symbol of superiority, right?

How is it that in a film whose premise rests on the idea of reimagining the past, present and future, we still end up with a blonde white woman with flashing blue eyes as the stand-in for what personifies evolution and supremely fulfilled human potential? At one point the Ape-like Lucy and Evolved Lucy meet face-to-face as Evolved Lucy does a bit of time-traveling. Their fingers touch, and we see them deliberately posed to mimic the famous Creation of Adam painting, and in that moment I saw what I suppose we were supposed to see: humanity at its beginning, and then humanity at its end, at its most perfect. Blonde, white and blue-eyed.

I can't accept that. I can't accept that there was only one black woman in the entire film, who delivered one line and who we never saw again. I can't accept that the bad guys were Asian and that although in Taiwan, Lucy's roommate says, "I mean, who speaks Chinese? I don't speak Chinese!" I can't accept that in Hercules, which I also saw this weekend, there were no people of color except for Dwayne Johnson himself and his mixed-race wife, whose skin was almost alabaster. I can't accept that she got maybe two lines and was then murdered. I can't accept that the "primitive tribe" in Hercules consisted of dark-haired men painted heavily, blackish green, to give their skin (head-to-toe) a darker appearance, so the audience could easily differentiate between good and bad guys by the white vs. dark skin. I can't accept that during the previews, Exodus: Gods and Kings, a story about Moses leading the Israelite slaves out of Egypt, where not a single person of color is represented, casts Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton to play Egyptians. I can't accept that in the preview for Kingsman: The Secret Service, which takes place in London, features a cast of white boys and not a single person of Indian descent, which make up the largest non-white ethnic group in London. I can't accept that in stories about the end of the world and the apocalypse, that somehow only white people survive. I can't accept that while my daily life is filled with black and brown women, they are completely absent, erased, when I look at a TV or movie screen.

I can't accept that. And I can't accept that when we think about the potential of humankind and what our brains are capable of doing and thinking and feeling, that people of color would be absent from that imagining. I can't accept that. And I won't. I'm tired of seeing people that look like me crowding screens both big and small: I am not what the world looks like. Hollywood, stop whitewashing characters. Give us more films like this year's Annie. I'm no Lucy -- like everyone else I'm only using a tiny amount of my brain's capacity. But you don't need to be a superhuman logic-machine to see that Hollywood has a major problem with depicting people of color, and it's time to actually reimagine what the world can and should be.


Scarlett Johansson

Just to let you know that you are way behind the times. Morgan Freeman played GOD; I didn't see white people carrying on about it. In the running for the new James Bond? Idris Elba.

Really this whole white washing Hollywood conspiracy is getting old. How about we worry about important issues like how A white supremacist walked into a black church and MURDERED nine people. Then he was provided a bulletproof vest and a trip to Burger King while black men and women who may have committed a minor misdemeanor offense are shot dead in justified police shootings or found dead while in police custody?

I agree with you 100%. So much history has been stolen and rewritten to fit Europe's self-image it's not even funny. You shouldn't even have to apologize for telling the truth.

As you know, the world we live in is built on lies.

I was fine with Samuel Jackson playing Nick Fury in the Avengers and the new guy that plays Johnny Storm in the Fantasic 4. In my comic books both were white people.

Hows that BURN? Quit bitchin for something YOU are not owed.

Get off your high racist horse and move on, get over it.

I would actually love it! Morgan Freeman in his younger years would have given a perfect Jesus Christ. I would also like to see RZA playing Jesus Christ!

I would not mind if someone would like to make a movie like that, but if they want a historiically accurate movie. Then the characters should look like we know By history that they looked like.

Like if you want 100% accurate movie of Lincholn or Martin Luther King, then Lincholn should be tall and white, and King should be a black man with a deep powerful voice.

I think that when you make a movie, especially about history or books, comics or anything that HAS a source material.
Keep close to the source material.
I did not first like that they changed Nick Fury to be black, but I accepted it.
But it was just because the character in the comics was not black.
I did not a still do not like that they turned the human torch black, just because if just makes no sence after all.
Why do they need to do so?
The movie was bad anyway, but the fact that they changed a character so known so radicaly makes no sence.
It still does not with Nick Fury, but Sam Jackson is a good actor and he brought some edge for that role so why not.
But you would not go and turn Jean Greay from a white red head to a Black woman with an afro? or to a chinese woman? or to a blond?
There are aspects in the characters looks that you regognize them from.
You don't go an make Hulk blue or yellow do you, why? Because Hulk is colored green in the source material.
So yes I think that Tut should have been black in this one.
But since through out the ages Hollywood has created an image of Egyptians being somewhat same looking middle eastern type people that are now in Egypt, they keep that easily regognized look.
Its the hollywood drama show, so the look is hollywoods Egyptians.

Sorry for my bad english time to time, it is not my native language.

Call it what you want but some folks have just not bought into the Hollywood and TV "BS" hook,line and sinker as some of you have..