The Hollywood Jim Crow: The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry by Maryann Erigha Lawer is academic nonfiction. “In The Hollywood Jim Crow, Maryann Erigha tells the story of inequality, looking at the practices and biases that limit the production and circulation of movies directed by racial minorities. She examines over 1,300 contemporary films, specifically focusing on directors, to show the key elements at work in maintaining “the Hollywood Jim Crow.” Unlike the Jim Crow era where ideas about innate racial inferiority and superiority were the grounds for segregation, Hollywood’s version tries to use economic and cultural explanations to justify the underrepresentation and stigmatization of Black filmmakers.”
The statistics and quotations the author provides show explicitly that merely adding more Black directors is not an ultimate solution if they are not given equivalent budgets and genre opportunities. Lawer shows multiple examples of circular reasoning: Black movies (meaning with majority-Black casts) don’t make money, so they should be given lower budgets, which inhibits their chances of making more money and, moreover, employing more Black actors and crew. In contrast, there are multiple examples of Black movies making higher percentages of profit than movies with predominantly White casts. She also shows how marketing to minority-only audiences can inhibit profits in a self-fulfilling prophecy of low profit.
