Why are Black actresses having such a hard time in Hollywood? Racism and the film industry's limited vision contribute to the scarcity of roles for Black women

Ebony, June, 1991 by Robin Givens

Why Are BLACK ACTRESSES Having Such A Hard Time In Hollywood?

Racism and the film industry's limited vision contribute to the scarcity of roles for Black women

EVERY Black actress in Hollywood--established and struggling--knew the numbers before Meryl Streep ticked them off last year in her speech to the Screen Actors Guild: Only 29 percent of all roles in feature films go to women. And that percentage includes all actresses. For Black actresses, the situation is significantly worse. According to the latest figures from the Screen Actors Guild, Black actresses are cast in only 10 percent of all female roles in major film and TV projects. What's more, in 1990, not a single Black actress made the list of Top 10 box office attractions--not one.

A Black actress has never--not ever--won a best actress Oscar, and Whoopi Goldberg--only the second Black actress ever to win an Oscar--became the first Black actress to win since Hattie McDaniel took best supporting actress for Gone With The Wind in 1939.

The paucity of roles for Black actresses--and Hollywood's limited vision of us as maids, hookers, sidekicks and best friends--makes it tremendously difficult for us to keep on keeping on, never mind find steady work. Yet, despite the enormous obstacles we face daily, we do. And we do it, in no small way, because of the legacy left to us by Black actresses who walked this road before us. We do it because of Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne and Josephine Baker--Black women who decades ago fought this very fight and made our struggle just a little bit easier, our triumph a little bit sweeter.

As a young actress in Hollywood, I hope that some little girl looks at me and says: "She's doing it. I can do it." Often that possibility is what keeps me going when I'm tired and frustrated, when I feel like the injustices of the world have taken their toll on me. If I don't do my part, then the dream has died. If Cicely Tyson, as tired and weary as I am sure she must have become at times during her illustrious career, had given up, then the dream would not have gotten as far as me. And I know I'm not alone.

Veteran Black actresses like Janet Hubert-Whitten ("Aunt Viv" on NBC's Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) and Sheryl Lee Ralph (Dreamgirls and To Sleep With Anger) somehow manage to remain beautiful, strong, proud Black women despite the struggles and--yes--racism which Black actresses have come to recognize as an occupational hazard.

But the fact that we recognize it doesn't mean we accept it. Far from it. In fact, in talking with numerous Black actresses, I learned just how much we're railing against it. I felt a sisterhood among us born of strength and struggle. And I felt our resolve and determination to make it against all odds--whatever it takes.

In all candor, however, I also felt a sadness. For in talking with my sister-actresses, I realized that not only do we have in common the richness of our Blackness and the strength of our struggle, we also share its burdens. At every audition, every screen test, every casting call, we face the anguish and the frustration of being misunderstood.

"When I first came to L.A.," confides Janet Hubert-Whitten, "I felt old, ugly, Black! It [Hollywood] made me feel worthless."

Wait a minute. Janet Hubert-Whitten--the woman who won a scholarship to Juilliard, who got accepted in the Alvin Ailey Dance Company though she'd never studied dance a day in her life and who starred in such Broadway classics as Sophisticated Ladies and Cats--felt worthless in Hollywood?

After I got over the shock of her admission, I realized something. Janet's nakedly honest confession tells you a lot about how Hollywood regards and treats Black actresses--how it can make us feel defeated and insignificant if we let it. The more I thought about her words, the more I understood how revealing Janet's comment is for all of us. If Hollywood can make a multitalented veteran actress of stage and TV feel insignificant, what must it do to the psyche of the up-and-coming novice?

It took some time for Janet, like most Black actresses in Hollywood, to become comfortable with who she is, to get past the industry's myopic and narrow-minded obsession with the "Barbie doll starlet" and to reach the realization that, as she puts it, "It's my strength that makes me stand out."

It's our strength that makes all of us stand out. But strength comes from pain. Only after knowing pain can one know strength. So that's what we Black actresses share--the hurt of being Black in an industry that has a hard time accepting, never mind embracing, the beauty and power of our Blackness.

"One thing about me is that there is no mistaking me for anything else; I am a Black woman," says Sheryl Lee Ralph, who stars in Mistress, a theatrical motion picture with Robert DeNiro, and is set to star in the new Hollywood/Disney film Randall and Juliet. Her statement is spoken with love and confidence--a certain sparkle in her eye; a sparkle that has withstood all the pain and hurt; a sparkle that has become heightened with an unshakable confidence and from which an undeniable strength grows.