Navigation of White Hollywood and code switching pressure

I make a living by acting in the machine known as Hollywood – an industry that merchants but is not for me. An industry where if I use my hands too much in front of the camera, the director shouts seriously: “Not so much ethnic hands!” “White hand, Chris, white hands,” I whisper smiling.

By the way – it’s a true story.

The essence of what I do is put myself in spaces where I must be chosen, where I must be selected as worthy to portray this thing. Beyond the ability to act, a large part has to do with the question of whether I am physically and aesthetically attractive, and quite pleasant to a certain look. When you earn your life from your desirability, is your body power yours? My body has been transformed into an object of desire by whiteness, and as long as the main decision -makers and the verification signatories in Hollywood are white bodies, so I must be desirable and for them.

This is why I always say that it is pleasant to receive large checks (I have a rent to pay), but nothing changes until I and the people who look like me to report them. In my opinion, this is the other side of the same piece to be considered as worthless. Because if I am not desirable in one way or another, I am nothing. And I fear that if I am too radically different from what they have already considered acceptable, then I could lose the status that I have already worked so hard to reach. I may not survive.

I made a film about this for the New York Times in 2020. The film was about the paradox of “Making It” in Hollywood: to succeed, you have to stand out from the crowd while assimilating whiteness. You must strive to be yourself while setting up. And if you aspire to be like one of these leading men, you grew up watching on television, well, you would better watch the game. First step: calm these curls.

It was in 2020 – the whispering of change was all around us. With the demonstrations of George Floyd, people seemed to have received the message: there is a problem and the old ways do not work. Businesses and Hollywood began to talk about diversity and hiring of Dei professionals, and guess what – it didn’t do much.

Although there has been a lot of discussions, progress has been at best modest. According to a PEW research report in 2020, the Latins represented half of the American population growth between 2010 and 2019 and represented 18% of the population (this has since increased). When will we see the diversity of our nation reflected on our screens?

I suppose that until it happens, we are forced to adapt to their model. I would love to tell you that I care 100% of what they think, but that itching to ask me if I am sufficiently code commander is still in me. I was used to a series in a network television program. It is a difficult feat for a Dominican Colombian Brown boy from Queens, and again, in the times when I do not work actively, I question my own body before the system. I wonder if I should take all these roles of drug traffickers, criminals and days which are still so important on our screens.

We live in a world where culture bodies are constantly invited to abandon parts of ourselves in order to move forward. This is not new information, but it is worth reiterating. Black and Latin actors are constantly forced to change.

It is our fight – the fight of loving and being ourselves. We are fighting to love and kiss our curls, our skin tones and our ethnic characteristics in a world that sells us the idea that the simple fact of being ourselves is not good enough. It is a world that sells us the NOSESECRET tool, often announced as “plastic surgery without surgery”. It is a plastic tube that you insert manually and force in your nose to create a narrower, thinner and more sharp shape. Only $ 25, it’s a flight!

We consider those who commit self-harm as a danger to themselves and for society. We criminalize this act. But what about self-hatred? Who is there to protect us from all the contenders we make for someone else’s gaze?

When I said to my pops, I wanted to play as pretending to live, that I wanted to be an actor, that I wanted to go to Hollywood, he said: “It will be difficult, but look at the role. To pretend. False until you do it.”

I pretended. But at what price? I kept my short hair and I got my nose that my first manager told me to get. And it worked. I worked much more. This is the sad part of all this. What attracts me is when I still hear white actors say things like: “You are so lucky. You are Latin, everyone wants you now. I’m just white. I have nothing.” Or the man to whom I bought a piano bench on Craigslist who said to me: “It’s great that they are looking for more minorities, but now I can’t have a role, you know?”

I followed a script writing course, and what I learned is a little discouraging. The longevity of a show is built on the idea that its characters can never really change. For the most part, the main characters must remain self-sabotage and can never really grow because then the show would change. The leaders do not like change. This is what we push in the brain of people – that we are supposed to be stuck in cycles. That we are supposed to be trapped by our delusions, our bad habits, our old stories, our old clichés, our old abuses, our old dogmas, its old oppressions, and that it’s okay. But this is not the case.

We have to start asking ourselves: what images and stories were placed deeply in our minds around the race and humanity, rights and fairness? What stories have we been fed since the day of our birth? For so long, Hollywood refused people of color, authenticity and meaning because the only way to make a thousand films per year is if you have a certain level of automation and the stereotypes clichés are part of this automation. Think of what would happen to industry if it really produced nuanced, complex and honest films.

Imagine if each script session began with: “Does this story help bring humanity into this space? Does this story marginalize an already marginalized community? Is this story true? Does this person be white? Does this story represent society and the race and the class in an honest way? Does this story help us to see and imagine a new more cooperative and loving world?”

This reimagination must first start behind the camera because we cannot be authentic in our narration if we are not honest on who tells these stories. The casting in advance will not change who signals the checks.

I need Hollywood to make it trivial and ordinary, not extraordinary. I would like to see a brunette “When Harry met Sally” or an Afro-Dominan futuristic fantasy with a Bachata score, a comedy of Indian and Puerto Rican Bromance friend, two young American children of the second generation, and everything that is meeting, dragging and speaking and speaking and speaking and racing in college. Imagine if it was just common, not exceptional, not a big problem, not the reason to make the film – it was right.

William Blake called the imagination “divine vision”. This implies all the senses, it implies everything: body, discourse and mind. I believe in the power of the media to start to show me something divinely different, so that we can start to imagine a new future. Television was a sign of everything that wanted to erase me, and now I was used to the series in a sitcom Fox entitled “Call Me Kat” – Curls and All. To be on television, a medium that I watched with so much fear as a child, is quite incredible. Even if I have to continue asking: am I just a guest who can not be invited as quickly as he was brought? Or am I an equal?

My goal has always been to use Hollywood as a vehicle to reach a place where I could create the art I wanted to create, to say the things I wanted to say, and I hope to help upon others to tell their stories. It is good to receive checks, but the real power is to be able to sign these checks, and nothing changes until people signing checks begin to be very different and a little less like white and rights men.

It is not a question of checking the boxes and making sure that people of color are sunk. It is a question of honoring the stories that allow these people to be so magnanimous and so worthy of being more than a device for your small white stories. If we look beyond the box of boxes and actually start to tell stories that represent what culture is, we could start to see this.

Today, my relationship with the change of code has evolved considerably since this 2020 video. I made a conscious decision to embrace and shake the natural texture of my shameless curls. That is to say that I chose and that I chose to choose to be myself. I need reminders, but it’s my baseline, where I come home. If I change, it is because an honestly representative role of society asks me – not because a tired intrigue needs another reformed gangbanger.

To my Latin colleagues and people of color in Hollywood: stay vocal and asserted on the limits and the representation you want to see. Create your own art and tell your own stories. Until the lion learns to write, each story will glorify the hunter. This is why the lion must write.

And try not to just talk about supporting each other and breaking the barriers; In fact put your money where your mouth is (you know who you are). It is not because there are brown / black bodies in the room that we cannot also perpetuate harmful power systems, or that we are not capable of exclusion. Are we engaged in anti-racist work in all spaces, no matter how uncomfortable it can make us? By straightening up and evolving that signs checks, we can create a more inclusive and truthful representation of us. We can pave the way for future generations to see each other on the screen without having to compromise who they are. And we all deserve spaces of belonging.

The book of who we are is not a fixed text. It flows, it is fluid, it is vast, we are shaping it here right now.

Christopher Rivas is the author of “Brown enough”, an exploration of what it means to be brown in a black / white world. He also hosts two podcasts: “Brown fairly” and “Rubirosa”. On the screen, Christopher is known for his work on the Fox series “Call Me Kat”, opposite Mayim Bialik. His latest book, “You You Good Swimmer”, concerns the enchanting journey of gender -free design and include all family dynamics.