More Voice-Over Mischief Of The Woke Kind

NYT June 27, 2020: Simpsons and Family Guy . . . white voice-over actors will be leaving the roles of non-white characters.

First off, I am 100% for expanding diversity in entertainment business hiring at every level. In every nook and cranny of the business, from leading ladies to third assistant Best-Boy grips. More diversity. And I'm in favor of more diversity in main characters, supporting characters, and background characters. Everybody from writers to casting directors to producers needs to get on this bandwagon, and those three job categories need more minority representation too! I am a diversity guy in general; I firmly believe that America's greatest strength is the diversity of its people. That should be reflected in American art, education, and business at all levels.

But, and you knew that there was a but coming, I'm afraid that we are being “penny wise and pound foolish” with current efforts to enforce diversity. I don't like the “enforce” part either. I would rather see more done in the areas of education, neighborhood and workplace integration, and people just trying to get to know one another. If you favor the “enforce” doctrine, bear in mind that people don't like it when you metaphorically put them on the hood of a car and scream in their ear, “hire more black Americans!” That's a wonderful message, but delivering it in that way is more liable to make people get angry and dig in their heels against the idea.

“Penny wise?” That's like forcing Hollywood to use black voice-over actors to voice black characters in their animated works. The “pound foolish” comes in when you realize that there are fewer black roles to play. You arrive at that conclusion based on the simple fact that blacks make up a smaller portion of the American population than whites. Am I missing something here? Is the new rule that characters must be played by members of their own race, or does the exclusive permission only apply to minority characters?

If the rule is generally applied, black actors could not voice white characters in animated works, or characters who were Chicano, Korean, American Indian, etc. I find many aspects of this woke culture very confusing. Are we now to believe that an animated show with a very diverse group of characters must find someone from each character's own group to voice the role? That might already be hard. In the Los Angeles high school attended by one of my sons, the students spoke eighty-five different languages at home. That's in the school records, “language spoken in the family home.”

But the worst part of it is this:

In it's fullest expression, this new rule is terrible for minority voice-actors. There will always be fewer parts for voice-actors who are black, Indian, Hispanic, or Asian. I can't support anything that limits employment opportunities for minority actors.

I suppose this woke culture moment is a work in progress. I can tell you, there are a lot of babies going down the drain with the bath-water. Wouldn't it be terrible if there were some Korean kid out there who was a regular Billy West, a voice-over genius, but he was limited to playing Korean characters? If I had to choose between a) only black actors can voice black characters; and b) black actors can voice any character at all, subject only to a neutral and transparent hiring process, I'd choose “b.” There are more jobs in it.

What's important to me is that all actors get an equal shot at shining in the great roles and sharing in the big money. Those chances were denied to minority actors for all of history, and we are blessed to see things getting slightly better now. People are becoming slightly more aware, and slightly more enlightened. Progress is being made. It certainly does need to hurry itself up a bit, but it also needs to be protected from backlash.

I want to see the presence of minorities in American society become a non-issue, and I want to see all minorities achieve income equality, status equality, education equality, and wealth generation equality. I won't live to see it, of course, but those should be the obvious goals. That should be the direction in which we strive. God knows there's a lot to be done, and God knows we find ourselves in a period of some progress and an awful lot of dangerous backsliding. Focus, people! Eyes on the prize! Don't get stuck in the weeds when the solution is to build a healthy forest.