There shouldn’t be. Using other factors introduces a lot of grey areas morally. If you want POC to be more prominent in movies/TV you need to be pushing for talent to be the only criteria. If you push for people to be excluded or favoured because of their skin colour in one scenario and not another it makes you both a…

I thought this was a biopic? Yeah, it would make no sense to create a white character and put him in this scenario. But if the character is MLK all you have to do is accept this guy as MLK. There’s no additional backstory needed, he is MLK.

So you don’t believe hiring the guy because he was the (joint) best candidate for the role was reason enough?

Would it make you more comfortable if he were in blackface?

And by people attacking his decision to cast colour-blind then people are legitimizing there being ‘white’ roles and ‘other’ roles.

So you’re discounting the possibility that the director chose the white guy because, I don’t know, he was just as good an actor as the black guy. Interesting projection there.

Do you think that by legitimizing making roles race-specific this will make more roles available for ethnic minorities? Interesting stance.

Funny, I advertised for clerical staff and said only Asian people need apply. You’d be amazed at the email I got from HR the next day...

Or you realise the character is still black...

No, no and no. Do you think MLK would have been in favour of restricting some jobs for whites only and some for blacks only?

How about MacBeth, Hamlet or Henry V? I suppose there was uproar when they were played by black actors?

What are you talking about? The Royal Shakespeare Company has been using BME actors in ‘white’ roles for decades and not once has a fuss been raised. Find me a more professional outfit than the RSC, I’ll wait.

Edit: Sorry you can’t be for** offering jobs preferentially.

Yes, I remember the huge controversy when black actors started playing Hamlet, MacBeth and Henry V. No wait, that never happened.

I believe that Jezebel is starting to eat its own tail.

Call me an idealist, but when you get to the point of saying some jobs are for people of this ethnicity only then you are a racist, sorry, but to me, you are.

You are aware there are white people in Kenya, yes. Bonus, if their family moves to America they are African American too. Arguably more so than black people in America.

They’re hard-drinking, Yes!

Gonna go with the vacuum then. Can get some housework done after. And in the show Gemma’s character is literally delivered and unwrapped when they buy her, hence my comments.

Hired muscle. Body guards, minders, people like that. Generally they’re built pretty big, hence Heavy. They’re big and intimidating.