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This is America: It's 2020 and I'm tired of watching movies centered on white people

Hey y'all! Welcome to the "This is America" newsletter centered on race, identity and how they shape our lives. It's your girl Rasha Ali, an entertainment news reporter at this fine establishment.

During the pandemic, I, like many of you, have been spending much of my time scrolling Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and just about every other streaming platform looking for a new movie or TV series to watch (If my parents are reading this, I've been spending my time building a business empire and learning computer programming).

With every scroll, I grew more annoyed with the lack of representation of Black folks in movies. I had no interest in watching another slave movie, seeing Black people battle systemic racism or make it out the "hood," so my options were waning.

Though we've come a long way in 2020 when it comes to diversity and inclusion in Hollywood, there's still much more work to be done.

But first: Race and justice news we're watching

Important stories of the past week, from USA TODAY and other news sources.

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  • 'There are dire consequences': Cashiers, delivery drivers struggled to get unemployment this spring as COVID-19 layoffs surged.

  • Why are there still so few Black executives in America? An in-depth USA TODAY analysis shows of the top 279 executives at the 50 biggest companies, only 5 are Black... and 2 have recently retired.

  • Nigerian citizens are taking to the streets to protest police brutality and the stars are offering their support: From John Boyega to Beyoncé.

It's 2020. Where are all the Black characters?

Over my (redacted) years of life, I've grown accustomed to not seeing people who looked like me centered in stories that weren't about Black trauma.

Last month, USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative released its annual report on diversity and inclusion. The report analyzed 57,629 characters in 1,300 popular films from 2007 to 2019 and found that 17% of movies had leads from underrepresented groups and 15.7% included Black characters with speaking parts. That's 17% representation for at least 42% of the U.S. population.

There are efforts to improve diversity within the entertainment industry, such as the Academy Awards' new standards for best picture nominees, but they fall short. "These standards aren't aspirational or transformative, which is what would be necessary to move inclusion forward in this industry," said Dr. Stacy L. Smith, who led the report. "My concern is that the standards create false hope that things will change when they reflect business as usual."

It's 2020, we're in the middle of a pandemic that's disproportionately affecting Black folks, police still think it's OK to shoot and kill Black men and women, and all your girl wanted to do was unwind with a movie highlighting Black joy... but no, because you can't escape institutional racism, even on Netflix.

After texting my frustrations out to the group chat (this is your shout out, now leave me alone) I'd settle on something like "The Kissing Booth," which I think maybe had one Black character somewhere in the background roaming the school halls or "Emily in Paris," which was mediocre OK ("ringarde" if you will) and had one Black supporting actor. Side note: I'm now upset with all of you who hyped up "Emily in Paris" because this ain't it.

How many projects centered around Black people can land a Netflix deal and be just average?

Emily, who? USA TODAY's Rasha Ali visits Paris and upstages the Eiffel Tower.
Emily, who? USA TODAY's Rasha Ali visits Paris and upstages the Eiffel Tower.

But Rasha, there are so many movies about Black people

Now don't get me wrong, we are seeing an emergence of Black content. This year, we got "Antebellum," "Bad Hair," "His House," "The Forty-Year-Old Version," "The Photograph" and are anticipating the arrivals of "Candyman," "Coming 2 America" and a Mike Tyson biopic.

In watching these movies centered around Black experiences, I found myself biting my tongue if they were bad. Because after having complained about the lack of representation, I thought I should feel grateful and welcome all movies with predominately Black characters with open arms. Yes! This is what we've been waiting for, I don't care if it's a horrible movie, I will do my due diligence as a member of the Black community and uplift and promote this film.

But then the legendary Steve McQueen spoke and everything became a bit more clear.

The director, who will premiere his "Small Axe" anthology series on BBC November 15, told Esquire in an interview published Saturday that he feels progress will have been made when Black creators are allowed to make "crappy" films.

"They have to be super special good for them to come out," McQueen said about his five "Small Axe" films. "So when we get crappy Black films and we don't have to think about it, then we're in a good place."

We are not in a good place

For the most part, there's an unspoken rule in the Black community: If a Black movie makes it to the big screen, we show up, we support and we shut up if we don't like it.

Negative criticism of Black films won't escape the confines of the group chat or pre-COVID office water cooler chatter. And that's because we all know what it's like to grow up with little to no representation in Hollywood.

Growing up as a Black girl in America, I experienced years of being told blatantly and inadvertently that I'm not worthy or beautiful, and it took years to unlearn that and realize that being Black is actually dope. I am beautiful (I mean just look y'all, your girl is fire), and I am worthy.

But perhaps if I was able to see Black actors and actresses of all shades, hair textures, taking up the big screen in all their glory, I wouldn't have had to go through years of learning to be excited about my Blackness. And I don't want future generations to have to go through that either.

We need to see stories about Black love, Black joy, Black heartbreak, Black coming of age, Black tragedies and Black college graduates moving to Paris for their dream job in marketing, making a fool of themselves and falling in love with their friend's ex.

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Next week: N'dea Yancey-Bragg talks cultural appropriation and Halloween.

This is America is a weekly take on current events from a rotating panel of USA TODAY journalists with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. If you’re seeing this newsletter online or someone forwarded it to you, you can sign up here. If you have feedback for us, we'd love for you to drop it here.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Black Lives Matter? In 2020 there are still too few films on Black people