“I don’t ever want to be cast because I’m black, I just want to go into a room and have the same chance as everyone else,” actor Alex Taylor said in response to the new Academy guidelines. “I want to say I like it in theory, but having it be a box checking thing is dangerous.” There’s no perfect method and trying something is better than trying nothing, but it’s a slippery slope.”

The Academy’s new diversity requirements, Academy Aperture 2025, provides criteria that films must meet in order to be considered for a Best Picture Nomination. The guidelines provide a quota for the representation of marginalized groups in four categories; on screen representation, creative/leadership team, industry access and opportunities, audience development (marketing). Films must meet at least two out of four of these standards. The requirements don’t go into effect until 2024 and only apply to Best Picture nominees. 

            “I think that I personally deal with more tokenization than being shut out of things,” Taylor said. “I feel like [I am] a good safe option to be the one black person in the play, because I have things on my resume, because I grew up upper middle class, because I went to private school, because I seem safe.”

            Critics say quotas attempt to increase representation without addressing larger issues of access. Taylor believes  that classical theatre is often made less accessible to people of color. This experience, which Taylor refers to as “gate-keeping,” was reflected in a video produced by the organization Broadway for Racial Justice (BFRJ) during which actors read anonymous submissions from actors of color.

“Coming up as a young artist, the first piece I learned was Macbeth’s ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ soliloquy,” an actor said, sharing an anonymous reflection during the BFRJ video. “It was given to me by my director at an incredible youth program during our Shakespeare portion of learning. After that day, I took the same monologue to another program, and was told that I didn’t need to worry about doing Shakespeare; that I should stick to pieces that I’d be in, like Fences and Raisin In The Sun.”             

One aspect of the Academy’s new guidelines that actors say feel promising are the measures outlined in Standard C: “Industry Access and Opportunities.” It requires the distribution or financing company of the film to offer paid internships and training opportunities to; women, racial or ethnic groups, LGBTQ+, and people with cognitive or physical disabilities. BFRJ is making similar efforts with their paid 9-week Casting Directive Program for theatre artists of color. 

             “It’s a very specific thing, of being a non-white person in a predominantly white space because you just feel like there’s always a little bit of a disconnect between you and everyone around you,’ said Toronto-based actor Ziye Hu. “Inclusion is not an afterthought, it needs to be built into whatever project you’re working on, that is what I want white people who have the power to assume.”

Initiatives like BFRJ and the Academy’s industry access guidelines seek to increase access for marginalized groups and reconstruct the historically white/male system of power at the heart of Hollywood and Broadway, by providing more training and growth opportunities for people of color.

Meanwhile actors of color are finding strength in their communities by processing their experiences and moving forward more confidently in spite of the discrimination they’ve faced in this industry. 

“I’m so passionate about being an actor, especially now, despite its challenges,” Hu said. “The challenge of being an actor with this aesthetic actually makes me want to do it more.  I’m not going into these rooms being afraid of who I am. It takes a lot of self-love and self-affirmation to be exactly who you are and go into these rooms, knowing that you’re worth it, and if they don’t want you, that’s ok. I’m untarnished.”

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Kamara Sudberry, 27, a native of Flint, Michigan, and diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist in healthcare, said that things might worsen before they get better.

“The deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery felt incredibly personal because of my proximity in age to theirs. I’m afraid that things might get worse before they get better,” she said.

Kamara Sudberry stands  in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. during the March on Washington on August 28th. Photo courtesy of Kamara Sudberry

Sudberry said that ironically, she was walking a 5K when news of Arbery’s death broke. She didn’t feel safe or comfortable afterward.

“I’ve been hurt about what is going on, but I have decided to pour my frustration into my work and use that energy to promote equity in the workplace,” said Sudberry. “Overt, cruel, and nasty racism is, unfortunately, something that I have seen all my life. Still, as a Black woman, the system feels designed for me to die early in life, and most likely, for no one to be held accountable for it.”

With the elections inching closer by the day, she hopes that a new dawn may be on the horizon. 

“I’m really worried about the effects that the election results will have in Michigan, but ultimately, I am hopeful, ” said Sudberry.

The disproportionate police brutality rates targeted towards Black people show that the shards of racial inequality remain firmly rooted in the U.S.

Nasredinne Younes wears the flag of his home country, Sudan, while holding up a “peace” sign. Photo courtesy of Nasredinne Younes

Nasredinne Younes, 24, a Sudanese immigrant and model for Endless Management in Grand Rapids, is also a senior studying Business and Public Relations at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. He said that he had had a hard time seeing people marching and protesting in almost every city across America.

“My Muslim faith teaches me about the principles of love, and racism is not love, said Younes. “I feel unsafe as a Black man in America. It’s almost like, you don’t know when they’re going to kill you. I’m scared for my life.”

But despite his fears, Younes said he has hope for the future. 

“Hope is one of the vital elements of human experience,” he said.“You have to have hope to keep moving.”

Black people are not the only ones feeling the weight of racism.

Kai Ton Chau, a Chinese-American adjunct professor at Calvin University and Cornerstone University is haunted by racism. Photo courtesy of Kai Ton Chau

Kai Ton Chau, 58, a Chinese-American adjunct professor at Calvin University and Cornerstone University,  said it’s personal for him too.

“The police brutality happening in America is very similar to what is happening in Hong Kong between police and citizens,” he said. “There is a lot of racial tension in the country, but it is good that we are talking about it.”

Chau said that he  became an American citizen in 2019. 

“I am now eligible to vote, and I don’t take that responsibility for granted,’ he said. “I want to think critically about how I exercise my political and civil liberties during these precarious times. Still, as we have learned from history, this too shall pass, so I am hopeful.”

But hope is not a sentiment that everyone shares in the face of the current rising racial tensions in America.

Monroe Aki O’Bryant, 43, a Brooklyn native who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is also an Abstract Photographer, Artist, Videographer, Curator, and Bus Driver. O’Bryant, who tells powerful stories through his art, said that hope is far-fetched for him because the Black community has been hoping for too long.

Monroe O’Bryant is interviewed at the Empowerment Network Podcast Show. Photo courtesy of Monroe O’ Bryant

“We sing, we march, but we never fight back. It’s time for us to fight back,” said O’Bryant. “Hope alone is not enough.”

Romel Jean Pierre, 27, a Haitian immigrant, Writer, Video Artist, Activist, and Non-profit Director for Konbit Mizik in Haiti, said that he is perplexed by the inequality which was all too apparent when he visited New York City.

 “I noticed that Manhattan was bustling with diversity in the daytime, but you could hardly find a Black person in Manhattan in the nighttime. Instead, they all lived in places like Queens and Flatbush,” he said.

Pierre  said he  is hopeful the deaths of  George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others will lead to change.

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“If you are white, you enjoy freedom, rights and all the privileges that come with it, Richards said to a group of young people as he canvassed for votes in the neighborhood. “But if you are Black, you have to struggle daily to gain your freedom, rights and justice in this country. The current protests across are a testimony that blacks in the US are still not free,” he said. 

Richards is one of nine candidates running for District 49. 

Richards moved to Staten Island over 20 years ago after graduating from high school in Africa. His father is Liberian and his mother is Ghanaian.  As a child he spent time in a refugee camp in Ghana. He later studied law and has been a public defender attorney for almost a decade in the borough 

Richards said, since declaring his intention to run for office, he has been a  victim of a hate crime.

Through his public defender job he has seen and heard first hand how police have been unfairly treating African Americans in Staten Island. 

“There is a relationship between low education and crime,” he said. “Most of the crimes committed like drugs consumption, gang violence, drunk driving are committed more by high school dropouts. This means, the more educated a Black man is, the less likely for him or her to commit these crimes in the community.”

As he knocked on doors, searching for votes, Richards told African American and African residents that over policing is impacting negatively the community.

“Due to the over policing of black communities, cops will see more crimes in those communities than in the white majority neighborhoods whose population is more than the blacks,” he said. “That’s why my agenda is to reform the criminal justice system and push for the rights of minorities in decision making processes.”

In a 2019 Center survey conducted by Pew research center,  84% of Black adults said they believe that they are treated less fairly.

Richards said African Americans  are also disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.

“Blacks are frontline workers more than other races,” he said.”They are the less privileged and those suffering from poverty and unemployment than all others.”

Richards urged the community to think critically about the next election as the fate of Black America is at stake.

“We can protest from January to December, but if we don’t vote for the right people in the election, our suffering will stay the same,” he said.  

Voter Lassanah Gray, said that Staten Island needs a selfless representative that will be able to deliver the high expectations of  the borough’s African Americans. 

He said he is supporting Richards because of his work in the community defending poor black people in conflict with the law. 

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Lourdes Cuesta, 37, works the register at a small grocery store she and her husband own in Port Richmond, a neighborhood on the northern tip of Staten Island. Cuesta came to the neighborhood 21 years ago, one of the first of many Mexican immigrants who flooded the area. Photo by Jonathan Walczak

Twenty-one years ago, Lourdes Cuesta, then 16, ran across the border separating Arizona and Mexico, guided by a smuggler and protected by a blanket of darkness.

The pair navigated the desert terrain for three hours until they reached a car that would take Cuesta to Port Richmond, a neighborhood on the northern tip of Staten Island.

The trip took only eight days, Cuesta said. Now, it takes illegal immigrants at least a month, if not more, to make the same journey.

Cuesta, who grew up in Puebla, Mexico — a large city east of Mexico City, with a population of about 1.5 million — arrived at a time when Hispanics, mainly Puerto Ricans, made up only 15 percent of Port Richmond’s population. Blacks constituted about a quarter of all residents, U.S. Census data shows.

“In that year, there weren’t a lot of Mexicans here,” said Cuesta, 37, who runs a small grocery store with her husband on Port Richmond Avenue. “When you saw some Mexican here, you’d feel comfortable and happy.”

By 2000, Hispanics made up 23 percent of the population, while blacks made up 20 percent, a five percent drop from 1990. The trend has only accelerated since then, neighborhood residents and business owners said, as Mexican immigrants continue to flow into the area.

The changing racial demographics of the neighborhood has led to tensions between blacks and Hispanics, some say, culminating in a series of attacks on immigrants this year. The most publicized attack took place in April, when four teenagers beat and robbed Rudolfo Olmedo, a 26-year-old Mexican man, as he walked home from work at 4:30 a.m.

The attack, which was caught on camera, took place about 500 feet down the street from Cuesta’s store.

“Everybody is scared of something happen, but me, no,” Cuesta said. “Maybe if you work midnight.”

Cuesta said she thinks some of the attacks that have been described as hate crimes can better be explained through the prism of alcohol.

“Sometimes people drink and something happen, and then everybody say, ‘Oh, no. It’s because he’s Mexican — that’s why it happened to him,’ ” she said.

Barber says business is down

Shortly before noon on a recent weekday, the owner of Pop’s Barber Shop sat gazing out the window of his shop, a few blocks from Cuesta’s store.

David Fowle, 44, who opened the shop in 1999, said business has dramatically slowed in recent months, dropping about 50 percent.

“There was news truck all over the place, police on every corner,” Fowle said, describing the aftermath of several high-profile attacks on immigrants. “You can’t walk. It slowed business down. Nobody wanted to come into Port Richmond.”

David Fowle, 44, the owner of Pop's Barber Shop in Port Richmond sits in his store as he waits for customers. Business dropped 50 percent after a series of attacks on Mexican immigrants this year, Fowle said. Photo by Jonathan Walczak

Now, with business so slow, Fowle helps pass the time by watching “The Price is Right.”

While some people are afraid, Fowle, who is black, said he hasn’t personally witnessed animosity between blacks and Hispanics here, something Cuesta echoed.

“I see the blacks interact with the Mexicans. Everybody speaks,” he said, still gazing out the window. “I don’t see a lot of the racial tensions they say there is. I don’t see it.”

A Mexican man walked by as he finished speaking.

“See, here goes my Mexican friend right here,” Fowle said, waving and calling out to the man.

Immigrants scared of police, residents say

Fowle and Cuesta both said they think the threat to immigrants has been exaggerated by the media, and the increased police presence has scared immigrants just as much, if not more, than the attacks.

“They scared because they immigrants, and there’s a lot of police,” Cuesta said. “Sometimes, someone asks me if the police going to take him, because the TV comes on and says something about police taking immigrants, or something like that. It’s just because they don’t know exactly what happens with the police.”

Jack Ryan, a Staten Island priest who helps run several nonprofits and affiliated groups that assist immigrants and work to alleviate racial tensions, said a “significant number” of immigrants have not reported attacks in recent months because they are afraid of the police.

But the NYPD and the district attorney have worked hard to foster trust with the immigrant population, and community efforts to address the underlying cause of the attacks seem to be working, Ryan said.

“In terms of publicly known incidents, it seems as though in the last six or seven weeks, the number of incidents has gone down,” he said.

Tensions do exist, Ryan said, but they are just as likely to arise because of tough economic conditions as racial differences.

“The major cause right now is you have a longstanding, severe economic downtown, where a vast number of people, especially working-age and young working-age males from different groups, are unemployed or underemployed,” Ryan said. “And that always creates tension and problems.”

Ryan moved to Staten Island in 1994 from Upstate New York. For the past nine years, he has worked for El Centro de Hospitalidad, now known as El Centro del Inmigrante, a nonprofit that offers various types of assistance to immigrants and day laborers.

The organization’s office is directly across the street from Fowle’s barbershop. “I have no problem with them, me personally,” Fowle said. “I know everybody over there.”

About a dozen day laborers and two mothers with young children in strollers milled about the center as Fowle sat in his shop about 100 feet away. Three young men sat watching a movie on a large-screen television while another man strummed a guitar in the corner. Some just sat staring at the walls.

When national political leaders and pundits use inflammatory rhetoric in arguments against illegal immigration, these are the people who really suffer, Ryan said.

“If you have a verbal climate that dehumanizes any group, when you have language or rhetoric that puts these people seemingly beyond the pale or less than another group, this type of rhetoric can destabilize our society,” he said. “And (the attackers) somehow manage to take comments and, at times, form a rationale why it’s OK to beat up people.”

Like Cuesta and Fowle, Ryan said too much has been made of racial tensions and the attacks, and too little has been said about the majority of residents who get along and interact on a daily basis. Most here were repulsed by the attacks, he said.

“Any attempt to blanket Staten Island as Archie Bunker land,” said Ryan, referring to the bigoted character from the old TV show ‘All in the Family,’ “is untrue. It’s categorically untrue.”

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