[Ads-l] Diverse = black

David Wilton dave at WILTON.NET
Wed Feb 28 13:36:00 UTC 2018


While the conversation was indeed about women and POC in Hollywood overall, the phrases "huge critical success, totally diverse cast" refer solely to Black Panther. And in the context of Black Panther, "non-white/POC" and  "black" are pretty much synonymous. There aren't any LatinX or Asians (aside from extras in the Korea scenes) in the movie.

I guess "diverse" could refer to the inclusion of women in the cast. Of the fifteen actors IMDB classifies as "top-billed," six are women--and some of these are really compelling and memorable roles--but given that the overall conversation is about the movie's overwhelmingly black cast, it doesn't seem likely that most people would hear it that way. I certainly didn't.

I've heard others use "diverse" and "diversity" to specifically refer to POC, but always with a racist taint to it (Ex. "we don't want any diversity coming around here"). That's why it surprised me to hear it from an NPR correspondent. It made me wonder if this particular usage was becoming more normalized, making its way into non-racist contexts.



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris Waigl
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 4:07 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Diverse = black

Sortof. I went back and listened to the piece, and think context is helpful here. The segment is the second part of a larger piece under the headline "Can Hollywood fix its diversity problem". The diversity problem in question is reformulated multiple times, more or less as "the under-representation of women and people of color in front of and behind the camera in [US] film and TV. In the first part the lead host is Steve Inskeep. Then Rachel Martin interviews the NPR art correspondent Mandalit del Barco about a report that looks at the 2015/16 output.
After del Barco summarizes the findings both for the "racial component"
and for representation of women (which both show continuing under-representation and little progress), Martin takes over and says the following (some dysfluencies filtered out):

> Right, because, you know I can hear someone listening to our 
> conversation and citing me too thinking things have changed. Or even 
> Black Panther, which is out now -- huge critical success, totally 
> diverse cast -- Wonderwoman even, which was directed by a woman, Patti 
> Jenkins. But I guess what you're saying [is] these are just 
> high-profile examples, but on the whole it's still a big problem.
So the topic is the whole body of output over a period of time (a season, say, or a year), and the way  "diverse cast" is used is that when it comes to that body of work's cast diversity, Black Panther is way over on the side of adding diversity. I would not conclude from this that she would have spoken of a totally diverse cast (in this sense) when, say, reviewing Black Panther standing on its own, or speaking one film at a time. (In which case it would also be true that Black Panther has a diverse cast, as Jim Parish pointed out here, and many have
elsewhere.)

I see no indication that she meant black as opposed to non-white/POC:
the whole exchange was structured in racial diversity on the one hand and gender diversity on the other.

Chris Waigl

PS: It's  https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510318/up-first Tue Feb 27 - starting at about 8:40 for the larger topic.


On 2/27/18 4:39 AM, David Wilton wrote:
> It was in the context of a story on the overwhelming domination of white men in Hollywood, both behind and in front of the camera. She clearly used it to mean "black" or at least "non-white." 
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On 
> Behalf Of Jim Parish
> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 7:01 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Diverse = black
>
> David Wilton wrote:
>> Heard Rachel Martin say on NPR's Up First podcast this morning that the movie Black Panther had a "totally diverse cast."
> The cast came from several different black communities on four different continents. Some were African-American; one was of Kenyan ancestry, others from Zimbabwe, Uganda, Guyana, and South Africa. I'd call that pretty diverse.
>
> Jim Parish
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list