DEI Actress: DEI Has Become a Bad Word in Hollywood and We Have to Use Different Words Now to Push Our DEI Grift

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Issa Rae says DEI has become a 'bad word' in Hollywood as executives of color 'tiptoe' to keep jobs

'Insecure' actress spoke at TheWrap's Creators x Hollywood Summit about the rollback of DEI initiatives

Actress Issa Rae said Thursday that she believes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has become a toxic topic for the entertainment industry.

"I'm seeing it," the "Insecure" actress said while participating in TheWrap's Creators x Hollywood Summit. "Just blatantly. People are scared and just not necessarily investing the same way that they would have before. Even executives who, you know, are of color are also like tiptoeing like, 'Well, I can't co-sign you because I'm going to lose my job.' And that's scary to see and sad to see because it's kind of like a bad word now."

In other words, moneylosing grifter projects had previously been greenlighted due to the DEI lobby's power and now that lobby has lost power and DEI projects aren't getting greenlighted and DEI hustlers aren't getting paid.

"We all know that, typically, when we're talking about diversity, equity [and] inclusion, it is about giving people opportunities that would otherwise not have them as opposed to pity hires and pity shows and the like," she continued. "It's changed meanings and has become a bad word, but it hasn't affected what we do and who I create for and what our company creates for and who we prioritize. And it never will."

Rae was asked about Hollywood and other major industries rolling back DEI initiatives since President Donald Trump took office again in 2025. As a series creator herself, Rae admitted that people have to be "smarter" about how they package diverse projects.

"Like, 'It's not a show about a Black woman, it's a show about class,'" Rae said. "As icky as that might feel, it gets the show sold. You know, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down."

Yes: Let's talk about "the medicine."

A lot of people don't object to black actors, writers, or directors. I have nothing against a black actor in a kind of show or movie I'd like. If it's a detective show with a black lead, I would watch that.

The problem is "the medicine." DEI grifters don't merely push beancounting hiring for positions. They also push The Message. They want to make movies and shows that are lectures.

There's a reason I avoid black-- and "female led" -- tv shows and movies: Didacticism. There is a powerful strain of woke lecturing among female and black creators. Again, if you're pitching me a black detective show, I might be interested. But if you're pitching me a black detective show in which every two or three episodes are about The Talk and White Supremacy and George Floyd and white superiors denying promotions to qualified black cops and giving those promotions to Mediocre White Men -- that's gonna be a "no" from me, dog.

And that's what a lot of this crap is. These creators are frustrated because they want to make very didactic, lecturing fare and be rewarded and beloved for it. But that's not what the public wants, and it's never been what the public wants. As Samuel Goldwyn said 80 years ago (I think): "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."

Partly they do this because projects that would never, ever have gotten greenlit in the past were suddenly mandatory due to the DEI takeover of all corporations. Partly it might be a kind of employment-guarantee: If a project is specifically about "The Black Experience in America," well, you know that all of the lead roles and key positions will have to go to black people.

But no one wants this. They never did. During the height of DEI, Hollywood lost hundreds of millions of dollars every year making one sure-moneyloser woke lecture after another.

Losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year is not a sustainable business model.

There is an entire grifter industry in Hollywood of people taking a mafia-like cut of projects. Crap DEI director Ava DuVernay has a whole business based upon the concept of DEI entrepreneurialism, monetizing white guilt and the George Floyd propaganda effort. It's called "ARRAY." You know, an array of skin colors and diverse lived experiences.

array now

https://arraynow.com

Founded in 2011 by filmmaker Ava DuVernay, ARRAY is a Peabody award-winning arts and social impact collective dedicated to narrative change.

She's been complaining since 2024 that the DEI grift isn't paying off like it had in the prior years. But how long did you think you could milk the George Floyd grift?

Ava DuVernay On Hollywood's Diversity Failures: She's "Tapping Out" & Will Go "Make My Movies"

Ava DuVernay is frustrated, and perhaps the odd way her acclaimed drama, "Origin" has largely been ignored by the awards circuit hasn't helped ("I wish she was at the Globes or SAG Awards or Critics Choice or the other nominations that didn't come," the filmmaker recently lamented about her "Origin" star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor).

It's no secret that the ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion are under attack in the United States at the moment (just look at what happened to former Harvard President Claudine Gay and the coordinated attack on her from the far right that led her to step down from her post). There's been a concerted effort and campaign among the conservative forces in this country to disassemble DEI initiatives and it's clear as day (you can cite dozens of articles on this topic, but feel free to read "Republicans are at war with corporate America over diversity" at The Hill or "Conservatives See Claudine Gay's Resignation As A Victory" in the New York Times or just yesterday, "DEI Goes Quiet" from the Times).

And all you need to do is look around at the way the diversity movement is receding in Hollywood, much like the way #MeToo did after it had its moment. Many conservatives see all these movements as "overcorrections" to roll back.

DuVernay was on the Talk Easy podcast recently and vented her frustrations about it all when asked about the attack on DEI in this country and the growing voices in the conservative right that are trying to systematically dismantle these practices ("After #MeToo Reckoning, a Fear Hollywood Is Regressing," is also another key NYTimes article to read).

In her long response, DuVernay said she would be "tapping out" of the "Hollywood industrial complex" and would "pass the baton" to others over the industry's ongoing failures in diversity and inclusion. "This town does not want it," she said.

...

"I'm going to build another house; I'm going to go over to the house that I've built on my own and focus on that," she explained. "That's where I am today, like I did it all, and I'm good. I'm just gonna over here and make my movies."

Well isn't that what you should have done in the first place, instead of playing the Black Female Card to get people to "invest" in projects that had no chance of breaking even?

What did her efforts achieve? According to DuVernay, she couldn't move the DEI needle in the way she wanted, and that's the source of her frustrations with the Hollywood industry at large, "I think I've done things to help but that those are isolated incidents that are [anomalies]. [The system can be fixed], sure it can, but it needs cooperation, it needs people to want to do it and this town does not want to do it."

Well it does want "to do it," but Hollywood is now on the verge of collapse. At some point a business has to actually start producing widgets the public is actually interested in buying.

Of course, DEI lecturing isn't limited to female and black creators. All of NBC's white liberal showrunners are determined to push the party line in every single show, for example.

The surprising racial and gender bias in 'Law and Order'

John Sides - January 3, 2017

Spoiler alert: You will not be surprised.

For many years, variants of the show "Law and Order" have been among the most popular television programs about crime. At times, they have been among the most popular programs, period. "Law and Order: SVU" still airs on NBC.

Social science research tells us that the public often learns about crime -- and especially its racial implications -- from how it is portrayed on television.

A new paper by Gaurav Sood and Daniel Trielli analyzes "Law and Order" and comes to a surprising conclusion: In its portrayal of both perpetrators and victims, "Law and Order" is biased in terms of both race and gender, but not in the way you'd expect. The show over-represents whites and females as both victims and perpetrators.

That is exactly what I expected.

In total, Sood and Trielli analyzed 731 episodes from three different "Law and Order" series: the original, "SVU," and "Criminal Intent." They identified the gender and race of over 1,100 criminals and over 1,500 victims portrayed on these episodes.

They compared the racial and gender breakdown among criminals and victims to government statistics for similar types of crime and periods of time. Here is what they found.

Criminals

Black criminals are less common on "Law and Order" than in reality. The graph below shows that in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), about 30 percent of criminals are black (with higher percentages among those arrested for murder or rape). But in each of the "Law and Order" series, about 10 percent are black.

Even when a criminal turns out to be black, he's not the real criminal, who will turn out to be a white guy and usually a white supremacist who goaded him into committing the crime.

...

"Law and Order" also distorts the true proportion of blacks and women who are crime victims. It dramatically underrepresents blacks as victims, especially with regard to murder. About 50 percent of murder victims are black, according to the FBI, but on "Law and Order" just over 10 percent of victims are black.

The show overrepresents females as victims. Just over 20 percent of murder victims are women, but on "Law and Order" it is upward of 40 percent and, on "Law and Order: SVU," 60 percent.

The female thing isn't due to political bias-- it's due to these shows being beloved by female, and in particular urban liberal females (AWFULs). Women like stories about women.

Related: They've torn down the sets for the cancelled woke identity "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" show -- Gay Klingons Eating Pudding -- as well as the sets for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and they're selling the props at auction.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:30 PM

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