Tamari Kitossa, Associate Professor of Sociology at Brock University, recently published a piece in The Conversation where he explains Hollywood’s role in the reinforcement of anti-Black racism.

He writes:

“What makes Black people more likely than others to be killed, beaten, tortured and raped by white police officers and vigilantes? Although Black men are killed by the police more than any other group, Black women are regular targets of police violence even though this fact is often rendered invisible.

A culture and history of racist misrepresentation may have something to do with it. Why has there been considerable tolerance among the silent majority of white people for animal-like, demonic representations of Black people in media and popular culture?

The short answer is that we are dealing with a culture of domination. It is a culture that thrives on the sexualized demonization of Black people. Two examples of this are Ridley Scott’s Alien, which comports with the trope of Black women as alien breeders and Predator, written by brothers Jim and John Thomas, that riffs on images of Black men as dreadlocked, violent and superhuman.” 

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