Wider Range of Color Urged for ‘Hollywood’s Big Picture’

Jesus Salvador Trevino’s lament about the lack of Latino representation in Hollywood (“Missing From Hollywood’s Big Picture: Latino Heroes,” April 26) is a sober reminder that the Anglo cultural hegemony reflected in motion pictures is a subject that still demands attention, especially at a time when America is finally coming to grips with its multicultural heritage.

My concern is that Trevino’s rationale for more Latino inclusion could be perceived as having undertones of group resentment and/or envy of the modicum of progress African Americans artists have made in the entertainment industry. His letter left me feeling that the success of black people in Hollywood is a stumbling block or a barrier to the progress of other underrepresented groups of color.

For example, Trevino’s notion that the Hollywood community views race exclusively in black and white is accurate only to the degree that black people had to create a national resistance (in the form of the civil rights movement) just to be recognized as human beings. In other words, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Without that pressure, black folk to this day would still be considered an invisible people.

His use of black people as an example of being the first choice of a Hollywood preferential “food chain” could leave the impression that African Americans have cracked the “boys’ club” and now are working in tandem with white producers to possibly keep other people of color out of the loop. That sounds outrageous, but in the battle for equity, it’s easy to be misunderstood. Words and the perceptions they create do matter.

Bottom line: Every ethnic group in America has a right to have a place at the table. No group or industry should have the power to negate one’s existence, whether through unconscious ignorance or by a deliberate act of exclusion. Just take care of how you make your case. We are fighting the same fight. African American successes in Hollywood should be held up as examples to imitate and not as a competing group you have to supplant.

RONNIE BROWN

Inglewood

I appreciate Trevino’s perspective on Hollywood’s exclusion of the Latino experience on screen, but he apparently believes African Americans by comparison have it made. Though the number of African American movies and working actors perhaps exceed Latin Americans’, those numbers are small relative to African Americans’ overall population and the quality of their roles relative to whites’. Larger numbers are of small consolation when the portrayals are largely stereotypical and representative of a relatively small number of a minority group.

What Hollywood needs is more minority writers, directors, producers and distributors, period. Comparing one minority group’s success against another’s is a waste of time and misses the real point: The industry needs full cultural diversity in order to prosper fully. Exclusion adversely affects Hollywood’s bottom line.

ELIZABETH J. VAUGHN

Los Angeles