Colour-Blind Casting or Blind to the Truth!

I have long been intrigued by the idea of Colour-Blind casting. For those not familiar with the term, it is the practice of casting without considering the actor’s ethnicity or race. It somehow feels as if it is a throwback to a time when society purposefully chose to ignore the ethnicity of a Black person as if it was an unnecessary and sometimes embarrassing aspect of that person’s “condition”. Whilst appreciating the fact that this is not the intention, it still leaves me a little uncomfortable. Some have argued that the conversion of a White character to a Black character follows the pattern of White characters blacked up to portray Black people and we saw where that went …..The Black & White Minstrels. Does this not leave the door open for famous Black characters to legitimately be played by White actors….can we have our cake and eat it too!

Yes, Black people have had a difficult time in the acting industry where written parts for Black people were few and far between and we took whatever was available and very often they were the stereotyped characters we are only too familiar with……the criminally infested Jasmine Allen Estate on The Bill, the drug dealers in the inner cities, corrupt African dictators and of course those in our prison systems having graduated from playing pool in an inner city youth club!

The recent controversy where the new production of Romeo & Juliet a Black actor Francesca Amewudah-Rivers was cast as Juliet has brought this issue again into the public domain and the actor has since been the victim of a barrage of racial abuse. A similar situation occurred when a Black actor was cast in the role of Hermione Granger in the theatre production of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child and the new “Black” Dr Who has got some stick even more than the first female one and he hasn’t even started! Of course, there is the argument that the casting of black actors in ‘white’ roles allows us to dwell on the essence of the character and not fixate on the colour and of course film and theatre is all about the audience using their imagination. Furthermore, what is even more bizarre is the controversy about a Black/Mixed Heritage actor Adele James playing Cleopatra, whose image has forever been crystallised by White actor Elizabeth Taylor, where African Egyptians are offended that the actor is too dark and even being mixed heritage does not cut it….they want her whiteness to be unadulterated! At this point you are probably thinking where I am going with this; well let’s see and let’s not forget Egypt is in Africa!

The big thing for me is can we disconnect, or should we disconnect from the colour of an actor’s skin, surely that is an unavoidable aspect of who we are, and does it take us to a place where the essence of who we are is thrown away. Surely scripts can be written for Black actors about doomed romances and Harry Potter type scenarios….or is the industry too eager to piggyback on what has been done a million times before using the gimmick of race to add a twist that can be monetized in the guise of liberal expression. I am just waiting for a White Martin Luther King!

So lets go back in time and examine the most famous Black characters in Shakespeare. The two that immediately spring to mind are Othello and Caliban. Othello has been played by Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Patrick Stewart, Richard Burton, all fine White actors who are so convincing we applaud their capacity to make us believe that they are Black….but I was never convinced and somehow my imagination was not able to stretch that far and the vision of Al Jolson did not stray too far from my mind. As far as Caliban is concerned his depiction as half savage or possibly native American or African Slave background leaves little room for imagination and more often than not were played by white actors and perhaps for Black actors this was far too close to the White imaginings of what Black people are supposed to be all about.

Colour blind casting is sometimes seen as a genuine attempt to respond to the structural racism that exist in the film and theatre industry which is sometimes fixated on different versions of classic storylines based on British history by authors such as Shakespeare and Dickens. The reality is that it does provide work opportunities for Black actors whose choices are limited outside of the usual roles. I recently saw the film Wicked Little Letters set in 1920s Littlehampton and was astonished at the number of Black characters which, in my view, did not seem to reflect Littlehampton at that time. There were Black and Asian police officers and a black judge and a Black postmistress……I was not aware that Littlehampton was so diverse! Unfortunately, as entertaining as the film was, it did detract from full engagement with the film and the storyline……. or perhaps my imagination could not stretch that far.

I guess we need to ask ourselves is all this colour-blind casting a rather crude attempt to create and idealist alternative that blurs the sordid reality of racism and blinds us from engaging with the reality of a racist history that Britain is uncomfortable about. Flagship Shows like Hamilton and Bridgerton are extreme examples where colour blind casting take us to another level of reality suspension. This is where the defence of colour conscious as opposed to colour blind is invoked as another art form. The sad reality is that a certain percentage of the population learn their facts and history from what they see on tv and it would not surprise me that there are many who believe that Black people did not really have it as bad as they sometimes complain about and costume dramas with Black people is the evidence….. and yes we are led to believe that there are Black police officers in every small village in the country…..and no one even notices that they are Black….but what do I know!

Yes, I believe in Multi-culturalism and Diversity and everything in between but not at the expense of distorting the truth and lulling us into a false sense of race not being a factor in the lives of Black people whether we acknowledge it or not.

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