Black Roles In African American Movies

When it comes to African American actors/actresses, their roles now are starting to be more important. In past years and still until today, the black person roles seem to be drug dealers, or in some cases, criminals. Honestly, most of the roles that blacks play almost reflect how most people see the African American community. When it comes to a movie, African Americans tend to get lesser roles compared to their Caucasian counterparts. The acting roles for African American has gotten better, but I still believe that major movie roles tend to go to Caucasians, producers are afraid that ratings might go down with African American cast members.

In early American movies before the First World War, many black roles were played by white Americans. They would us black face, which is coloring their faces and hands to resemble an African American. For instance the black face technique was used in the movie, Birth of a Nation, and showed how some Americans depicted blacks that were living in America during the early 1900s. Many movies made in early America were seen to be very stereotypical toward the African Americans. Those types of movies seemed to be more of a hate

I believe that blacks still sometimes don’t get the roles they deserve. The reason being is that just recently you see that black women are starting to get better roles then they have in the past. Hollywood movies that are based on African American women and men. The African American women essentially have a lower movie role than an African American man, but when comparing the roles of a Caucasian movie, an African American male role would be lower than a Caucasian female although its higher than an African American woman. This shows you that Hollywood still considers African American people beneath other races, typically a Caucasian