> How many people had that as their newspaper headline, or something to that effect?
> We had "Blacks come to the fore on Hollywoods most colourful night"

Didn't Halle Berry say something in her acceptance speech about her win opening a window for blacks in the acting world, making "progress" for them? That bothered me. It may just be little inexperienced me, but I sincerely doubt that much racial discrimination goes on in the movie business. In fact, most of what I've seen lately has the generic half-white, half-black, perhaps-a-few-other-minorities cast.

Now, if that discrimination is going on and Halle was right in what she said, then I agreee with her; no one should be discriminated against for their color, but really, I don't see how anyone could actually legally discriminate against someone for their skin color now. I hear constantly about lawsuits against big companies because of blacks being fired now. I doubt a good black actor would "slip through the cracks" simply for being black.

Correct me if I'm wrong. As I said, I've never been in the movie business, so I don't exactly have firsthand experience.

> Which was interesting, given Denzel Washington's quote "Don't put 'Black Actor Wins' on your heading, put 'Actor Wins'" (Paraphrase)

That I agree with. Isn't it somewhat degrading to an actor's quality of performance to categorize his win as a win "for [his race]," rather than as an actual win?

I've never really understood why someone can be proud of a skin color. I understand pride in a culture, but not in something as insignificant (as is even stated by those priding themselves for such) as color.

> I thought this was interesting, I knew that I wasn't the only person out there to feel that to single out a minority group was just as much racism as to completely ignore them. It's worse, in my opinion, because it's the racism of pity, of condescension, and it's harder to break through that. People are respected for being the best 'Black' in the business, not the best in the business, which, quite frankly he is.

Agreed.

One small thing that bugs me, too, is that people see racism from a one-sided point of view. To most that I've encountered, "racism" means, by definition, "white people talking trash about black people." I've always considered racism to be discrimination based on race, whether one is black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or otherwise.

I read an article in the Fresno Bee by Clarence Page after the September 11th attacks, stating that Osama bin Laden was racist. "Wow," I thought, "he figured it out?" The article went on to explain that because bin Laden referred to blacks as slaves in one of his recorded tapes, he was racist.

That bugs me. I would have thought that bin Laden's hate of Americans would count as racism; no, it has to be against blacks to count. I agree racism against blacks is a bad thing, but it's not the only way it goes.

ri "Discrimination (racism or otherwise) isn't good, no, but don't take it to the other extreme, or you're only as good as those you're criticizing" a