Musical Shut Down After White Kid Lands Lead Role
Liberal “social justice” is never about actual equality. Case in point: A New York high school musical has been shut down due to protesting students, after a girl who is white was cast as the lead role in the play.
Why is this a problem for the oh-so-tolerant crowd? It turns out that a group of African-American students believe that only “brown and black” people should be allowed to have the role. So much for being colorblind.
According to Fox News, the kerfuffle at Ithaca High School started when a white classmate was cast as Esmeralda in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
“Student activists then banded together under the umbrella of Students United Ithaca and wrote a letter that included a list of demands,” Fox reported.
The protesting students even admitted that that young student cast as Esmeralda was “a stellar actor, singer, and dancer,” but she should be excluded from the role because she is the “epitome of whiteness.”
How is this not blatant bigotry?
Ironically, the tone-deaf student group is claiming that the casting of a talented white girl in a lead part is “racist”… while simultaneously boycotting the production because of one actor’s race.
“At best, this is cultural appropriation,” the students whined in their letter. “At worst, it is whitewashing, a racist casting practice which has its roots in minstrelsy.”
That’s a flimsy argument to begin with, especially for a high school musical. What they’re essentially arguing is that no races can ever play a part written with a particular skin color in mind; to them, this obsession with race is progress.
But there’s an even more glaring issue: The character of Esmeralda as written by Victor Hugo is actually half Roma, half French. If they consult a map, the outraged students will find that France is European, and the Roma people from northern India are in fact Asian.
Yes, the character was not “black” to begin with, not that it should even matter.
“It shows you that theater wasn’t made for you,” one of the protesting students declared to the Ithaca Journal. “And it shows you that, if you can’t get the parts that are written for you, what parts are you going to get?”
Incredibly, the student group is literally complaining that color-blind casting is racist. No, this is not “The Onion.” You just can’t make this stuff up.
“Stop the racist and openly stated policy of ‘color blind’ casting in the ICSD,” the students wrote in a hysterical and demanding Facebook post.
“Because of institutionalized racism this results in white children being cast in roles written as white parts and also white children being cast in roles that were specifically intended for people of color,” the unhinged high school students declared.
It becomes even more like a bad parody. The race-obsessed actors actually believe that they are forwarding Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a colorblind America.
“Members of the group told Fox News that their ultimate goal is in line with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message of love, unity, understanding, and inclusion,” that news outlet reported.
“Our endgame,” the group declared, “is a performing arts program with more unity, more inclusion, and musical where we can all experience the joy and bonding of inclusive performing arts following best theatrical practices.”
Nothing says “inclusion” quite like demanding that a talented actress lose her role because she was born with the wrong skin color. The irony and twisted bigotry of this seems completely lost on them.
“Social justice” has gone crazy. King’s vision has been co-opted by a new generation of racists — there is no other term for them — who sees coin tosses as intolerant and academic performance as prejudice.
America better wake up, because a new wave of intolerance is starting to spread.
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