Doing Better: My Personal Responsibility Regarding Race In America

I was talking about how Hollywood is changing. Slowly of course: no massive social structure shifts rapidly. Inertia, you know. But it really is, as the “New Majority” concept becomes reality. And I saw some concern about what that is going to mean. Slightly nervous questions about how the old majority will be treated.

I said, a little flippantly, that I always try to treat people 1% better than they treat me. I do. I strive to be more honest, loving, and efficient than the people around me, using them to help me improve my own vision of what is possible.

And, of course, saying “1%” is a bit of a conversation stopper. Who can complain about someone saying they’ll treat you 1% better than they were treated? On what basis do you complain and say: “that’s not enough?”

But the truth is that if you know history and current events, 1% is a fraction of the distance you’d have to travel to get to “fair play.” Gaps in incarceration, inherited wealth, life expectancy and infant mortality, imagery of death and eunuch-dom in film and fiction….more than 1% difference, easily. What difference do I think realistically represents the “gap”?

I don’t know. I really don’t. Too much pain, too much data, too much denial to really make the kinds of comparisons that would be closest to “True” in terms of the Three Gates.

But…here is what I’ll say. I, personally, can do better than 1%, and will commit to encouraging…