It's tough being a black actor in Hollywood. On one side you have to face perceived prejudices by producers and executives for roles. Now, talking about prejudice can be a tricky thing when it comes to acting, because choices are made on subjective levels. It's not like you take a scored test and anyone making over 90% will get a job. As an example, if you were casting a romantic comedy, if the script has the lead female character a rich socialite from the Hamptons, it is arguable you could cast a black woman in the role but more than likely you will go for a white woman. In doing that, would you put the male role, who is supposed to be in the same economic status, a black male? What if you have a villain in the story? Would you make them black? Let's look at it in a broader, funny side; what if you cast a great unknown black actress for the female role, but Blake Lively wants the part? She's the hot actress of the moment so do you give it to her to guarantee eyeballs at the box office?

The example given is a simple one and the whole dynamics of casting people for roles has a lot of other factors that can work for someone getting a role or not. Prejudice may not even factor in despite wanting to use prejudice as an excuse.

The other side black actors have to face, which I personally think is the bigger issue, is the representation factor that the black actor is suddenly put into. I came across an article bemoaning how so many black male actors dress up in drag for roles. The focus was on Martin Lawrence because of his new film in the Big Momma franchise, but Tyler Perry, Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx were all mentioned as actors who degraded themselves and blacks in general by taking on such roles. It didn't matter that audiences flocked to their movies, in fact in the article it was seen as further proof of non-enlightenment by the actors because they didn't pay 'penance' for the degrading roles by doing more serious work.

In the same site, just a few weeks earlier, there was another article about Tyler Perry taking over the Alex Cross role. He was criticized because he played Medea in so many of his own films. So here he was trying to branch out into something else and was slammed because he played a woman in his own films, yet was criticized in the newest article for not branching out.

The same sort of 'you must represent us all' came about in a recent NY Times article looking at why there were no black nominations for the Oscars. You can't have nominations if you don't have quality performances by actors. That can't be blamed solely on the producers. While I would like to, and in legitimate cases sure you can argue the merit of not having a black person in a role, but if you are doing a period piece, or frankly you can't because of time or scheduling you can't get a black actor for the role, that shouldn't be the fault of the producer. You see, it get's tricky trying to put blame on any one thing because calling racism for the lack of black roles doesn't account for so many factors behind the scenes that could work against having a black actor in the role, including, sorry to be so blunt, the actor not being good. Halle Berry won an Oscar and the next film she was in was Catwoman, not the best performance of her career. She had a film this year which people thought would be in contention for an Oscar nomination, but many critics thought it was similar to her Oscar winning role so she didn't get nominated. Also that film never got any buzz. For Colored Girls was thought to be a showcase of black female talent, but in that film it could have been there were so many black actresses finding a standout was too hard, it could have been the poor box office reception of the film or frankly it could have been, because it was a Tyler Perry film, it was stigmatized because of that.

See, lots of factors could have played a role instead of racism for no black nominations this year.

Still, there is issue of everything being symbolic. There are tons of black actors in Hollywood but there is focus on the well known ones. Time and time again, reading articles about Hollywood and racism the argument comes out why don't the actors who have made it help the ones who haven't. Tyler Perry makes a ton of money with his Medea movies. He has an audience that is receptive to them, yet you have people who criticize him for not having more positive roles for blacks in movies. Let's be blunt, they hate him for the Medea role, but I suspect people hate that people respond to his Medea role. I might not like the character, but there's no arguing the man has made enough money to set up a studio in Atlanta. That means lots of jobs for people in the area. When he's shooting a film, and the entourage of stars come in to film, that's income for people in the area.

When Pauly Shore was making movies, when Adam Sandler makes his movies, they are not looked upon as being the icons for all while people or all white males. If they lose a role it isn't because of racism. Again, I'm not saying racism doesn't exist in Hollywood, but if every article about the lack of work by black actors is attributed to racism it's hard to expose true racism. The amount of male black actors who make a living in drag is FAR less than those who don't. The Oscars don't have any black nominations this year because there were no quality actors this year. If you want to look at token nominations in award shows, take a look at the NAACP Image awards. Looking at their nomination line up for films it seems they were searching for anything with the hint of a black performer. With the NAACP awards catering to black performances, why did Justin Timberlake get nominated for Social Network? That's a question for another day.