Hunger Games Spawns Racist Reaction

The Hunger Games film not only has been wildly popular but has also caused a racial controversy, possibly related to the casting of a small number of black actors. The main character, Katniss, is described as having dark hair and grey eyes, but was played by blonde, blue-eyed Jennifer Lawrence with her hair dyed brown. However, the few black characters in the movie have been attacked in racist comments that surfaced on social networks such as Twitter and Tumblr.

 The fury felt by some fans of the books involves two of the tributes, who conquer readers’ hearts, represented in the film by a black 13-year-old actress from California, Amandla Stenberg and Nigerian born Dayo Okeniyi. Some of the hateful comments filling the internet were: “Kkcall me racist but when I found out Rue was black her death wasn’t as sad.” “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the little blonde innocent girl you picture.”

It was shocking that most of these comments came from teenagers, who apparently deleted their accounts when other fans began exposing them. The author of the books, Suzanne Collins, clearly described the character: “a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes…” While she reminds Katniss of her blonde little sister, Prim, she clearly states it is her size and personality that resemble Prim, not her skin color.

All this shows how racism saturates this society, so much so that young adults feel compelled to write hateful comments about imaginary characters. This relates to an article posted on a website about gossip and culture aimed at women titled, “I see White People: Hunger Games and a Brief History of Cultural Whitewashing.” The writer says the system brainwashes us with racist thoughts, to the point of influencing our imagination so that many people assume if characters aren’t described explicitly they must be white.  

The media pushes racism so much so that most “black movies” are advertised in black neighborhoods and they tend to be produced by people like Tyler Perry who only casts black people in stereotypical situations. Popular sitcoms like Friends or Seinfeld only portrayed white characters; non-white people appeared very rarely, merely to convey the idea that, “hey, we’re not racists.” Black and Latino actors in films appear in far fewer numbers, and many times are cast as criminals. Asians are portrayed much of the time in stereotypical martial arts roles.

A New Yorker article (3/30 reports on a Canadian man who followed all these racist remarks on the internet and composed his own page displaying all of them, simply because he was so astonished and disappointed at the wrong attention the Hunger Games film was receiving and decided to shame the racists who posted these comments.

The New Yorker writer says that what’s “more important, and no doubt disturbing [is what the] ignorant tweets say about a certain generation’s failure of imagination.” The writer doesn’t seem to understand how racism goes hand-in-hand with this racist system.

She uses the analogy of “a few bad apples,”” when clearly these teens are displaying what this system teaches them. The writer commented on the second quotation above: “The phrases ‘some black girl’ and ‘little blonde innocent girl’ are ringing in my head, as are thoughts of heroes in our imaginations who are white until proven otherwise [Superman, Spiderman and other popular superheroes], a variation on the principle of innocent until proven guilty that, for so many minorities, is routinely upended.”

The creator of the page posted this quote saying, “Remember that word innocent? This is why Trayvon Martin is dead.” He sees how, in this society, white is tied to innocence and his example of Trayvon is perfect, as he was shot for being a young black male in a predominantly white neighborhood.

We must understand that one step isn’t so far from the other and must expose any kind of racism, whether in the form of jokes or ignorant comments. We have to educate people on how capitalism uses racism as a tool to divide us. We need to win people to see past skin color and understand that we are all the same; we are all part of the working class. Only united will we create a communist society that eliminates ethnicity and doesn’t judge us by our color.