Disney used to have a race problem. In Dumbo (1941), the murder of crows that sees Dumbo fly sings a song in black dialect about that miracle. In Song of the South (1946), although Uncle Remus is the wisest character in the film and the child lead has a black friend, the movie is derided as racist because the black plantation workers in the Reconstruction South are shown to be happy, speak in dialect, and are generally subservient.

It's been eight decades since those films came out, but Disney still has a race problem—only this time, in the leftist world of “two wrongs do make a right,” the racism is overt anti-white racism. This is especially true when it comes to the Star Wars franchise.

Disney has expended a lot of time and money expanding on the original movie with all sorts of television series that I’ve avoided seeing. (My son sat me down to watch the first episode of The Acolyte with him, and I still haven’t recovered from the bad acting and the boredom.) Unlike the original film series, when Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian character was the only black face in the movies, there are lots of non-white actors getting prominent roles.

For just a few examples, in The Acolyte, IMDB lists the following obviously non-white actors in the top cast: Lee Jung-jae, Amandla Stenberg, Manny Jacinto, Leah Brady, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lauren Brady, and Amy Tsang. In The Mandalorian, the following obviously non-white actors are in the top cast: Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Misty Rosas, Leilani Shiu, Lateef Crowder, Ariel Shiu, Taika Waititi, Omid Abtahi, and Temuera Morrison. In other words, the casts were not reunion week at the KKK convention, and the same holds true in all the other franchise offerings.

However, according to the cast, racism was still an overriding problem, not directly from Disney itself, but from abusive fans and an insufficiently supportive studio system. In June 2022, Eric Deggans, who describes himself as a “non-white Star Wars fan, wrote a piece for his employer, NPR, complaining about all the racism:

The most surprising thing about the racism directed at Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram is the fact that some people are still surprised by it.

After all, other actors of color who have joined the Star Wars universe in recent years have complained about racist attacks from fans online, including John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran.

So it wasn't exactly shocking to this non-white Star Wars fan when Ingram – whose turn as villainous Inquisitor Reva Sevander lights up the series – shared messages she received on social media from trolls using insults and the n-word to denigrate one of the most powerful Black women to join the franchise.

Here's what is surprising to me: that the media companies behind the Star Wars juggernaut — Lucasfilm and its owner, Disney – haven't done more to proactively support non-white actors and push back against the racism they regularly face when taking prominent roles in the franchise.

The only problem with this narrative is that there’s contemporaneous evidence that the facts may not have aligned with the narrative:

Since I have no interest in Star Wars and have no idea who any of these people are, I cannot explain the disconnect other than to suggest that it’s entirely possible that, in the vast world of the audience watching these Disney offerings, there are racists. It’s also entirely possible that minority actors have been trained to have their antennae tuned in to racism, and, therefore, are hypersensitive to a handful of nerds being nasty.

Be that as it may, these actors turned what should have been a profitable celebration of yet another hackneyed entry into a very tired galaxy that’s not far enough away into something that was all about them.

But it doesn’t stop there. For self-referential actors, too much is never enough, so John Boyega, the British-born actor referenced in that NPR article, is back again for another bite at the “I hate my white audience” apple:

The embittered Boyega, by the way, is worth about $8 million, which is a whole heck of a lot more than the fans he’s attacking. In other words, typically for leftists, this is a guy who’s punching down.

In old Hollywood, stars did not insult their audience...ever. The audience was their ultimate paycheck, with the studio as a mere intermediary. Today’s Disney actors, though, most of whom are no-talent hacks, believe that they are conferring a signal honor on the audience fortunate enough to watch them. Each is a diva, and if they’re in a racial or sexual minority, each is an angry diva.

It's ironic, really, that Boyega’s father is a Pentecostal minister and his mother is someone who works with the disabled. You’d think that, with those two as his parents, Boyega would have grown up with grace, love, and charity. I’m certain that his parents did their best. I’m equally certain that Boyega’s signal lack of any of those virtues is attributable to growing up in leftist England and working in leftist Hollywood.

Leftism has no room for moral virtue. The only cultic points it awards are to those who are angrier and more entitled than everyone else.

But a lot of that is guesswork on my part. What isn’t a guess is that anyone spending money on Disney at this point is lending credence to the old adage that a fool and his money are soon parted.

Image: X screen grab.