 University Libraries. My pleasure to welcome you all here for the fall 2020 really graduate series presentation, the first of two. This is collaboratively hosted between the University Libraries Graduate Student Senate and Faculty Senate. The series supports the research process of graduate students through the sharing of their successes, challenges, and their use of information resources in a public forum. The presenters for the series are selected by the Graduate Research Series Committee, most librarians and staff from the University Libraries as well as the Graduate Student Senate. This morning, Adela Shea, Oriane Di, our Oriade, a doctoral candidate in media arts and studies from the students College of Communication, will present Casting Black Cinema, Opinions of African Americans and African Immigrants on Contested Casting in Black History Films, which illuminates the multifaceted issues surrounding the casting of Black actors in Hollywood. Before pursuing his education at Ohio University, Adela Shea earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication from Ty Sholomon, University of Education in Nigeria, followed by a Master of Arts degree in Communication and Language Arts from the prestigious University of Fidon, a public research university in Nigeria. Please help me in giving a warm welcome to Adela Shea. Thank you. Thank you. Again, I'm Adela Shea, Oriane Di, and I'm from Nigeria. I'm starting my 40th and 50th year doctoral program with media arts and studies, and my commentary chair is Professor Steve Howard. I must have been knowing he's retired now, but I agree to stay on to see to the end of this wonderful exercise. So, I'm going to go straight into the presentation, and I descent out of this presentation. I'm going to use myself as a pathway into discussing myself into this research as an African immigrant. So, I come from Nigeria, West Africa, and within Nigeria, there are like 250 ethnic groups. So, I come from somewhere in the Southwest, and we are called Yoruba. So, within Nigeria, my form of identity, the way I know, is either I am Yoruba, in my ethnic identity, or religious, Christian, almost, or traditional worship, or within all of this context. So, traveling, I've been to a few African countries, but every time I step down, I'm going to an African country, I do not notice a difference. I just assume to that identity, because almost everyone looks like me. Then in 2019, I took the flight from Lagos to JFK, and my reality changed. Stepping out of the airport, I started noticing a difference. Out of every 10 people I met, 8 or 7 people looked different. At that point, at that conscious level, I started noticing I was different for the first time in my life. In over 30 years, over 30 years of my life, I started noticing some difference. It was at that subconscious point, moving from JFK to Bulgaria, from Bulgaria to Kolumbos, in a very completely different environment, and everything just looks different. Then I came to Yoruba. Then I started feeling false as I went to the DMV, went to search for security. Then I started noticing there was something about my identity that I changed at taking on a new identity called black. In Nigeria, I was Yoruba, I was Christian in America, but my clear is you, that identity blackness. For every form I was about to feel, there was a space of saying, are you black or African-American, black slash African-American, and I had to think, or not Caucasian, I had to think somewhere within there. And as an immigrant, I used myself as an example to other black migrants who come into racialized societies for the first time. They assume a new identity, and in that process of assuming an identity and looking back to the history of America, and its marginalization of black people, their efforts to create diverse places, inclusion, and in that efforts towards inclusion is created around the identity blackness. So we are trying to do some form of reparating justice for black people, and in that way, because I've assumed that identity somehow I fall into that black identity, almost automatically, because any time I take a form, I take blackness, or African-American, and that's the story of black British actors in the integration into American societies. So for, if you've seen any of these movies, Selma, Aread, Get Out, Judas, and Black Messiah, you see that the lead actors for all of these roles, Anuelo for Matthew Luther King, Sinceri Ribbo, for Aread Togman, Daniel Caluya for a racially charged movie like Get Out that talks about the interracial dating, the crisis of interracial dating, then we have Daniel Caluya, Eden for Judas and Black Messiah. Then the question becomes, is blackness actually enough for these immigrants to play this character? If it is a fight for representation, if it's a fight for diversity, we are trying to give back to people that have been marginalized within society, within the industry itself, within all the world itself, is it enough that they are black that they can play these roles? So we now start seeing social media agitations about their place to play these roles. So I've covered the identities of those people. So you see hashtags like Not My Aread, Boycott, Concast, Not My Freedom Team. So African-Americans are challenging their place, the place of black immigrants to play these roles in these movies. And we can see that in these movies, it's not like the old cast is black immigrants. The idea is just to be lead actors. It is historical. Wireshoot in black, British Nigerian play Martin Luther King Jr., Wireshoot, Sensea Ribbo play such a character and all of that. So we start seeing people challenge all of this. We see example, some of this is, Kaluuya lacks the American nuances of the character. Afro-British should not play AUS historical icons. And AUS means American descendants of slavery. So they are groups that are formed around those identities, AUS, foundation of black Americans. And the idea behind this thing is to create a difference, to say that there is no originating within blackness. There's a difference around these identities. But there's a flip side to it. And the flip side is for every historical African icon, for most of the historical African icons that have been depicted in Hollywood, it had cast African-American African characters. So you have for a spectacle for Ugandan Idiyami. You have Don Chidoo for Teriwanda. You have even for immigrants. We have Will Smith playing Dr. Bennett Forman, who discovered the science behind concussion and football and all of that. And we have Modern Freeman playing in British. So it becomes a back and forth. If you argue that I can't play your historical role, why do you take on our own historical role? And it becomes a crisis. And when we dove into like literature, theories, and all about this, the underlying things behind the fanfare, the blockbuster, people watching it at home, there's the idea that when there's a disconnect between the audience and what you are trying to prove as a form of representation for them, there's a need to dialogue with the audience. And there's been several instances of reception stories around Black audiences, but it's been limited to African American audiences. And it has never really touched on casting approaches. Because over time, Hollywood has tried to develop casting approaches that is more inclusive, that is more representative, and that really speaks to different identities of Black audiences that have not been talked to about the idea of casting. What do you think about these casts that we do for these moments? And that's where my research comes into play, to bring the voice of those audience. And I felt what better to do these groups that are contending about these casting approaches. So, this is the tricky part about it. I came into the degree to study mass communication, I mean, media heritage. And when I started this idea about films and I started thinking about it, I was limited in the framework of media studies to try and look at how do I do this? But as I delved deeper into this conversation, I discovered that it was true in that scenario to be limited to one framework. Then it took me to political science, it took me to media studies, it took me to film studies. Film studies, I was looking at theatre and casting, I was looking at what representation means within the discussion of all of it. And I was looking at the latest, not the latest, at least the most popular approach that has been designed to try and correct the darkness of all you would cast in, colorblind casting and non-traditional casting. And the idea behind it was that you can cast people strictly because of their talent and not look at the color of their skin. Then in that way, when we now drill down, we can now cast them, we can cast them because of their talent and not look at their ethnicity. So we've seen other scholars even try to look at them, we can cast them and not look at their sexuality. So there are studies out there by people who have studied why do you cast non-LGBTQI career actors in place of LGBTQI, for LGBTQI roles and all of them. So I started drilling down in that approach. Then from their media studies, I was studying equal square, the media, the idea that the media at the top and there's a subordinate and how the media, how those behind the media make money based on all of these things and how profits determines every decision in the production phase. From selection of actors to all of the out-profits determines all of this. Then looking at media etymology, casting for profit, then audience research. This is what I'm doing, reception studies. I'm looking at how the audience makes sense of what they watch and all of this. Then I was looking at stop-offs and coding and coding. The idea that the audience brings their lived realities into whatever they watch. So African-Americans are bringing their history into the idea that how can an immigrant act for them and African immigrants are bringing their reality and saying that now you can't be Mandela because you are not from Mandela's ethnicity or from this country and that discourse. So tapping into another pathway of Black audience research, then political science brings into the idea of race and the idea of racialization of America and push back against race through ethnic ideas, how immigrants socialize themselves into the country, how they exact their own identities against racialized systems and all of that. Then I looked into Black control race relations because it was not possible to discuss this without looking at what happened in the past between Black groups that formed the Black population in America and African immigrants just represent in my new part of that group. So it was impossible to look at that without immigration because the possibility of this contentions is due to the fact that for civil rights, fallen tree Black immigrants can come into America. I call them Black right now because they come from their country but they assume Blackness when they come here and because we can come here fallen tree unlike. So it clears the connection between the Blacks who come for civil rights and the Blacks who are fostered as slaves. So for my methodology to do this research I embraced the qualitative research because it was like how near it was like I was jumping into something really new discussing all of that and the first part of this was I did some form of para-textual analysis and para-textual analysis means that you discuss issues around a media text. So reviews, social media analytics and social media comments post and all of that and from that I extracted about 10,000 Twitter and YouTube comments concerning these contentions from Twitter from using those hashtags I was able to extract quite a number of data for analysis and I did some form of para-textual analysis to give me like a framework about how best to go into the second phase of the research which was the interview. So it was going to give me enough information about how to craft my questions, how to reach African Americans and how to reach the African immigrant groups. So every participant that participated in the second half of the of the research were publicly selected so he must have seen like three of these movies. He must have seen three of these movies as an over 18th and he must be over 18 and all of that and I began collection of this data during and the turn of COVID after COVID. So I had some funding from Sudan AFS to travel to places to see but people would not come into these meetings so I would travel to Texas and expecting eight people and two people sure. So it became so there was there was a need for me to readjust my methodology to fit into that period. So I embraced online focus group discussion and because I wanted it to be in a place where people meet their everyday realities I went into social media sites that these discussions about diaspora talk about immigrant talks while already existing site. They used proverbs I don't know if anyone has heard about proverbs it's online so that was where so I went to black groups African American groups then immigrant groups spoke to their leaders and that's so and I'm very happy that was the approach I took because at the end during the conversations I had to stop it like three times before they get the right one because it was full of time. So I was bringing African Americans and African immigrants into the same room online and every time we lost control of it so I was I can now imagine I would not be in person because this is a very tense topic about opportunities about scarce and prestigious opportunities within the groups that these groups are using. So because it was a qualitative research and like online post-positivity research and constitutive research there's no standard measure for for ensuring validity of this thing so that's where I come into place my position and these two images from get out I can't see I don't know if you can see them well show the my place within these two groups so if you look at this first image it's Daniel Caldria looking with some suspicion and that was our African Americans look at me every time I try especially the constitutive ones who are members of foundational black American groups and because they were challenging my place to do this research who are you to talk about you represent the people who talk about and take our opportunities why should we open up to you so those were the kind of things I needed to navigate and the second part is anyone think you know the reaction Chris had when he saw another black person on the plantation and that was African immigrants so they were just so happy he was and he was he was he was a kind of problem to the research because I actually navigate the fact that I'm not here to come and justify what you said I'm here to listen to you and yeah here is like I'll give an example I was interviewing one one of the immigrants and it was like you know us now the way we do when we get here when we go to class we do and they wanted me to affirm everything except so it was difficult navigating these two processes at least for the African American side over time I would have to go back send my consent form send my university profile send everything to say that I am not doing this to try and get some information to use against you this is actually backed by university I've got a note from my professor to try and be a show and be a show but for every time the African immigrants he was just keeping my straight face and in the conversation making it feel normal and because that and it's equal to this study and I'm the most important research instrument and all of that and it was it's also very good to talk about my intentions for going into the research because it spreads like a dashboard I would see the idea that this can blow up into things if not mitigated over time so my idea is to form some form some form of way of looking at solutions looking at this problem helping into this problem and finding some way to create data that would be good enough to solve this problem so in that instance it's not as pan-Africanist as it used to be the idea of correlating all black groups into one jolly fairy merry group it's the idea of saying that there are differences how do you work around these differences and that's and that's what I tried to bring up from this conversation so I go to my finals the first finding how to do identity and the idea was that there's a diverse conception of blackness so African-Americans argue that we are not one how do you come and take that role we are just different people you cannot look at just our color of our skin and just take it our history shows we are different people so the first position is that we own these roles we own these roles and we should have the first rights to cast for this role so there were even examples of that one of the participants gave me about the idea that even for the movie Queen and Black and focus in Daniel Kaluuya that director actually did not even present the opportunities to African-Americans he just chose Daniel Kaluuya and then Daniel Kaluuya chose the person who performed with him unilaterally without opening it up for the possibilities of African-Americans to participate and the idea is that this role they see this role as a form of restitution the idea that we are fought one literally said we are fought for this for long and all of a sudden we are not good enough for what we are fought for so the idea is that defeat there's a feeling of inadequacy the idea that over the years we've seen black representation that go backs to very racist representations like the better of the nation black face and all of that all of a sudden here this prestigious role and it's taken out of our hands so we own it it should be a form of restitution this casting approach should be a form of restitution and are we not just good enough we play gangsters we play all in these movies and all of a sudden there's Martin Tatum who is really good there we come to the second position that was very common within this research was the idea that there's a distortion in the history of african-americans so if you watch iris you know the character of big alum and the idea that you create a movie around african-americans fighting for their rights fighting to escape slavery and the bad guys of african-american in a slavery charged movie the black guy is the african-american and the idea is that there's a distortion and that casting assist in that distortion so i frankly we did not argue with that position but that's the position because within this role within these movies the big character might be an african movie but there are other african-americans so the argument is that when you cast african-americans as big characters they come to some form of activist approach to the roles they are looking delving people and saying is this actually true is this can be is this story the true depiction and the idea is that there's an attempt to make this history palatable in a way that it's easier to see so one of the participants argued that so you you can go into argue that a white person can go into the cinema and come out and like oh so black people actually when the black person is the black is the bad guy in the black in his slavery movie and ariads adds some form of romantic relationship with a white slave order so in that way it was they argued that there's a distortion to it and that's this can only happen because african-americans are not really at the forefront of this movies and all that then this was like the biggest thing and it came across both groups that i spoke with even with african immigrants and african-americans the idea that there's a commercial dimension to cast so they don't believe that these historical movies are the cultural reasons for why we are telling those stories and are being lost to the idea of profit making so the argument is that you watch the preview of the movie before the movie comes you see the marketing and the person who is talking whistling for them freedom thing is speaking to you in british English and you're like so how did it play this role it creates this aura around black British actors and this dates back not to even black actors alone it dates back to even white actors crossing over from the united kingdom and the idea that they are better trained they are better than american actors and as part of the marketing they allow them to market those movies in their natural form so they come and speak british movie then they cuts to the movie and you see them speak genuine americana sense and you're like oh this is great i want to see so that there's a marketing around these identities in such a way that it is profit-driven and this was also another pattern that was loses with african immigrants they also argue in that direction the idea that morgan freeman is good enough for mandela is the fact that the producers and we not targeting the african market they are spreading it around when they're looking for a popular place book and drinks and they are not investing in emerging actors so you can't pick up emerging actors then the finding from the african immigrants and the first finding is like the most the most stunning probably i attributed it to some methodological flow on my part in it in the idea of trying to look at participants and the first thing that came up was i don't care that is not my hero so speaking to a canian speaking to a canian speaking to a nigerian and the first thing they tell you is mandela what's my business it's not my business so the idea that there's usually five african immigrants who's become very automatically challenged in that point in the idea that even within in america africans they need according to nations so as a nigerian i'm dealing with synovu running the country the president running the country the naira falling in value why what's my business with somebody playing mandela if mandela is not my hero so and that was why i tended to ask some form of methodology to flow because immigration scholars have argued that when black immigrants come into america they always come and fund pockets around nation states so nigerian immigrants canian immigrants and in that way and that was reflected in this finding they really did not care so to make for sense for this i asked them about specifically their hero so i'm like as a european as in nigerian if somebody came to play our world and they are from another country out with you so and the idea was that no you soon feel right for me are you saying they're not good enough actors in nigeria are you saying they're not good enough because because we own this role so when you say that we can't play we feel inadequate so in that point they were pulling for nation specifically so as a suggestion for further research to look like when you now talk to them on their national level are they going to refer back to ethnicity like i said in the first point in nigeria yeah quite a number of ethnic groups so now if you are going to go to nigerian people actor is somebody from this ethnic group going to say no the hero belongs to my ethnic group and that's for further research so the same way for african immigrants they talk about nation specific casting so you should look for somebody from that country and cast them and the second one is the interplay of essence and the homogenization in depicting african identities so the argument is that it's it's an argument of frustration the idea that these guys just think africa is one everywhere and the idea is that it was built around assent have you seen concussion anyone seen concussion so will smith did a very good job acting for military forces there's no assent like that that speaks to any nigeria and was acting in an e-bowman from nigeria when you hear the e-bowman speak and you play the video next to voce me you see that there's a complete disconnect between these realities so the idea is that if you call pull an african american out today from any crowd and tell them to depict speak like an african they are going to talk about one particular generic assent that we hear every time and the idea is that if you don't cast people from these nations you will not be able to amplify differences within african identities and in that way casting fosters a platform where you homogenize african identities in such a way that they are not different so i tried to bring up a map of showing like like different ethnic groups and i'm saying like this represent like just 20 percent of the different realities within african and the idea that this casting homogenizes these identities into one and african might have to wait for so many years to start being referred to like england belgium rather than saying that i'm going to african because this film industry continues to homogenize these identities in such a way that you are not able to find the differences within african then this was a major finding and it was the idea that african immigrants believe that they are more than one like minorities and i'll explain and it's the idea that these actors were selected so i ended every interview with asking about the opposite i'm like what do you think about african americans complaining about this casting approach and the african immigrants feel oh i just believe the actors are better because they chose them based on talent so the idea is that we as immigrants go on out and work out for these opportunities and we are just better and what this kind of idea does is it returns back into the ages of stereotypes about the idea of saying that some identities are lazy they are not putting themselves out for the roles they are not good enough and that's why these producers automatically select immigrants and all of that so on the free side when i spoke to the african americans and i told them what do you think about you've complained about immigrants taking your place what do you think about mogad preman don chidu for us we're taking african roles like it's an american so they they argue it's an american movie so african americans don't take it so what does what this does is that the argument from immigrants positioning themselves as model minorities who are doing good enough to take these roles and the argument from african americans arguing that it's an american movie creates profit for for the white edgy money that controls this production content in the idea that african americans are supporting media imperialism in african and african immigrants are supporting stereotyping of african americans and who benefits from all of this the media producers and if i go ahead so you complain about something or you support it suddenly when it's done to another person from both groups and in that way that's it so based on this i've come out with a few recommendations and that's the domestication of the nature of black history so at this point from the two groups the people i spoke to they are tired of what one of them called it black trauma on the idea of seeing black bodies suffer this history so there's more to tell i'm sure if somebody put a camera on me since 2019 it will make the blockbuster surviving surviving in america taxes that's an emigrant story and then the example of bob at abyssalah was similar those are stories that go beyond the idea of tight slavery racism supremacy once you diversify these stories there are so many stories to be told and african immigrants and african americans are not fighting over scarce opportunities within these prestigious roles they're cultural sensitive casting if there's a disconnect between those you want to represent and what they see of your representation then it is fair so there should be some form of cultural sensitive casting a way that drills down i don't want to hear somebody speak like an evil man and i'm hearing a south african accent a generic south african accent so in that way there should be cultural sensitive and production companies and production organizations need to categorize black history casting is it a form of restitution are you giving back to groups who have suffered marginalization and in that way if it's the form of restitution you limit the casting to people who are members of those groups but that is the moral argument because production companies are all about profit so what is my argument to them i think we need to take that moral step in the idea of looking beyond profit when you don't see the actor you want investing on emerging actors and in that way so in that way we are not fighting over black issues in that and then supporting up and coming actors the idea that oh you talk you say that i've chosen the best fits for this role and the best fit is from another group why not invest in an emerging actor from the group you are trying to represent rather than cost the scales because it it causes chaos between the black groups and to benefit of production companies yeah i cannot tell you this without talking about the library yeah and this is like one important part and i know some of my colleagues are here who never used the library try and use it in my four years i've used they used the library from home try using it here in my four years i've used the library in a crazy way so i'll say crazy my first year i used to go to the siren rooms and on the fourth floor i felt the best way to approach american education and all problems was to keep silence and just do it then i realized that it needed the craziness of the problem every professor has given you an assignment like they are the only professors teaching me no one cares about the other professor so that i step from the fourth floor i moved to the seventh floor over a year so i think the ambience the different sections i just go in the mood some days i want to see everybody coming from the coffee shop on second floor the bus or another and some days i'm like there's no progress i have to go somewhere very silent and so i move around people who know me seeming on the third floor last computer there and sometimes i'm on the second floor and that's where i've used the library and i've gone to the seventh floor once once i didn't know what i was looking for academia would try to be crazy and you would do things that i've benefited from the interlibrary or the subject library and even before i got to this point of this research in my first year when i was not sure what to do i I stopped until i think yeah and i was doing research around representations of like LGBT qi characters and i stopped about finding literature for me within the african point and and i just stopped sharing at some point so i was looking for a very a concept that sounded like everybody has worked on it's cultural anxiety look it sounds like something you just speak up and everything and i can't just find any book i've gotten books that had cultural anxiety as the the title of the book and there was nothing no definition of it in the book and it was like 300 pages wow so i yeah i had cultural anxiety and i spoke to tragically and tragically gave me a list of citations then i went to cherry cherry and i gave it to her and she went went back and forth and she was coming back i was like i don't see the citation i don't see the citation then i say that then she was like wait where did you get this yeah then i said tragically like cool this is fake and that's that's when i realized you don't rely on such a fake citations and all of that the life chapter has made a life saver just going on library site and like looking for materials within the library page google scholar not finding it and the person who i was starting the just told me i just pasted this in google when i came up with it and i've searched for like five hours on the live website and all that so it was life saver the data analysis software on second form computers in second form that was where i did all of my data analysis and as i don't know if i can make suggestions to the library the idea that now especially for those of us in the media ads communication most of real life communication at this point to social media and there's the need to embrace more softwares or extracting on social media because they are usually very expensive to to get i use netletics i use leximons uh leximons takes like a hundred and something dollars to use and if those kind of things those kind of softwares are provided for students it makes life easier i know that i subscribe on leximons twice with two different emails so when you have 30 days free so i would try to do an analysis that is like i'll charge you one grand for five dollars and i go consume it and i bring my gmail register and do what i have to do so if those social media analytics um software can be brought to the library to be helpful students thank you and that's so first of all thank you for this presentation you delivered it very well and very interesting what about the lack thereof of deia in the united states maybe potentially at some point making changes that could affect the film industry da diversity equity is inclusion and how it would well so in the united states especially the kings about during covid where there was a movement looking at different diversity within the united states or the lack thereof and i'm just curious if this movement the way that you may see it whether or not that has a chance bringing more people into the films that typically are not that are not in the films yeah that is a very important question and that was why i spoke to you to my recommendations on two grounds first in the recommendation is less diversified students why not talk about a caribbean family in south of chicago surviving within the buses and all of us and in that way you bring new people into the movie industry to represent them then the other position is diversity inclusion and all of this would not matter if the people you are representing don't feel you are representing them so the idea is to bring these blank voices and tell the production companies the people relating casting casting directors and say that the groups you are trying to represent feel a disconnect with the characters and feel a disconnect with the stories in this approach so it's going to be a good movement but right now the movement needs adjustment the approach towards inclusion needs adjustment to read to fit into the new realities of those that are included in this position we've got two questions from online i've got first first welcome a comment one person said insightful presentation another person said amazing so i've got uh simian sunday uh asked how does the accent of the actor affect the authenticity of the story and the actor's credibility of playing such roles yeah so let's go back i'm not making a position yet i'm bringing the voices out it's exploratory that's the first thing then the second thing is if you don't speak like me how do you represent me so it automatically challenges the authenticity so if if i'm watching somebody and and the person is playing a role of dr betz uh oman the doctor they eat an adrian people doctor and i watch those meet all true then somebody tells me that his references somebody from from my culture and i don't understand i don't speak like that my people don't speak like that so the people who are being represented the group who are being represented feel left out every other person might not feel left out every american all the americans watching these movies or across europe don't know how a nigerian people want to speak but the group whose character is being presented know it and feel it disconnects from it so for to ensure inclusion you must the cultural assets in such a way that you represent even to literally means like the assets next question from online says thank you thank you so much did you learn anything that surprised you yeah the africans are united they they refer back to their nation states rather than having an african identity despite the fact that everybody says that when they speak so when we know as an african immigrant i know i've encountered people this in chicago encountered police in africa and really i speak they can they know that i'm not african american people i'm not native american and i think i get it but i got it passed my friend and i got it passed in chicago just because of our accent so they know so the idea that everyone sees us as african but within the groups within the african community we don't see that we refer back to our nation specific identities even in the diaspora again so that was very surprising and he didn't see that coming i i i i i let it as a methodological flaw but and for more recommendations i didn't have a question so i'll just comment it's like the accent thing i get because you like the movie fargo like the accent that movie is not correct i think it's not even making me crazy so like i understand that but i would like to figure out how do you deal i mean i'm not an expert on the cinema or the loading industry right i do think like a corrupt industry right so like how do you make integral changes that work towards a democracy and an institution that already exists yeah and that's why i said my major recommendation is a moral argument so we see this play out in affirmative actually uh policies in the past in the idea that should be needed to just african americans but when you go into black colleges you see Nigerians they're thinking of this list so the argument becomes a moral argument are those in charge of this policy ready to adjust to make it a form of restitution rather than diversity so the idea is that it is driven by profits the big six have a hand in all of these movies there's no how you can any of these movies that are highlighted here there's an application to the big six you're just there in the background funding it and like the creature says you face the pipeline it takes the term so the idea is that every casting decision is in profit position uh the idea is at least what he pretends sometimes to do some form of real representation maybe as the pretend along the line to get the rise of true representation but it's a moral argument we can really make suggestions got another question from online also a general representation uh do you think racial classification of african americans and africans in the same category as black slash african americans plays a significant role in film representations yes so that's that's the problem here the problem here is that we pay the identities in america are racialized and in the form of those visualizations approach to casting for movies so if if i put a picture out you can say i want to cast for uh fredantine for another movie and all of that everyone who looks like fredantine is ready to show everyone who looks black like fredantine is not going to show until i say that i'm casting african american for fredantine and actually humans other people so the idea right now is that black people are pushing back against the racialization of the idea and the reason why they are pushing back against that racialization is the idea that there are no opportunities so we want to hold onto opportunities that are that are capable to adjust our identities rather than have a generalized form of it so for example the idea of seeing and think identities so and the advantage of once we force to immigrants and the idea that as the people to avoid the problems that come with racialization with blackness the idea of all uh stereotypes violence and all of this is african immigrants say that i'm nigerian amerian but to take on opportunities they assume blackness so they can their identities are manageable they can switch between blackness and nation-specific identities depending on what benefits it brings and that's the sticking with some african americans because we must stick that line and all of that so those the way of conflating it into racial identities creates problems for trans people um i know that you previously talked about collecting qualitative data um and i was curious about that because you were pulling the comments on youtube using hashtags from twitter and i just want to know did you collect any other data anywhere else using like our databases or our services like satistha or anything like that was it just the social platforms yeah it was social platforms where i wanted to collect it from where these conversations were happening in real time to study real-time conversations about them so that was why i collected the conversation on youtube and i looked at a few reviews i also took an interview from our party zero took from everywhere just to see a generalized view and every one i tried to analyze was coming from the position of the groups involved in the conversation so i didn't take i do have a follow-up sorry um so i'm a researcher as well so this is kind of like a silly question but um how did you organize all that data like do you just have like folders so now like like i'm just curious i have folders folders folders folders folders then i merge bring the data merge clean merge clean that way if i'm going to look for my source data now it has newest s newest x so the one the longest s is the newest that i've worked with so i count the s new s x x because i have to clean manage clean manage and fight and put them into the software for analysis so it's it's crazy in my own right now i wouldn't wish it on anyone right she asked for one more question but let's have a bit um um i spoke to eight african-americans just the background study i think like opening it up for for that study so i spoke to eight african-americans and seven african-americans spread across cities that day it was then for the focus group discussion i have like transformed over two sessions and it ran into too much data for one person to take care of but it's what i sign up for so it's like my finding had now moved to more quantitative studies so you can now take from what i have gotten right now then we can now amplify two quantitative studies and test on a larger sample size and see because one of the findings i got was people essentializing the role of acting so the idea that oh because trauma has been passed through generation and the actor if you choose an actor from that group that trauma helps them bring out their group and that becomes very problematic because acting is just maybe behaving like somebody you are not so the moment we start actualizing it and that was when i talked about culture and anxiety and true towards essentialism there's a need to test it on a larger population do people really believe in this and if people really believe on that idea of biological essentialism then it comes in problem because those kind of ideas we need to balance ways to turn all of the opportunities so so yeah and that's the idea between restitution and diversity the idea that oh it's made believe you can play but the idea that so when i was doing the focus to discussion the person who challenged my place the most about being able to do this research is a state chapter chairman of foundation of black americans and his argument is is in his i think 47 year old and he said that my mom moved through segregation and she's still here this thing happened yesterday it is not time to open it to everybody it is still my role so the idea is that are we looking at that as a form of restitution and if the casting directors have said we selected the best person who can do it are you saying that there's nobody within our group who can actually do it so the the idea right now is people still look at this roles as a form of restitution because of the history behind the rules so they would not look at the argument of whether or the actor they are seen it as a very good opportunity it's the biggest black movies usually they become the biggest black movies so white lead out to everybody so it's about economic opportunities as much as it is about whoever is playing it i would not hear that becomes a very tricky question for me to ask because i can't make decisions so you spoke about positionalism yourself being part of the data and as an african i believe there are some preconceived ideas about this so how are you able to suspend some of the preconceived ideas yeah it was it was tricky it was tricky suspending progressive ideas because even i struggle with the identity blackness so oftentimes i'm always on twitter when i see a Nigerian say as a black person he acts like you are not the black person being Nigerian never been on a plane never even gotten to a racialized society how do you take on an identity that was created to create a distinction and hierarchy in different places so i think that first helped me because i struggle with the identity blackness in its first place that is one of the things that first helped me and the second thing was the idea of trying to disassociate it is almost not possible for qualitative researchers because of our bias and all of that so the best way to do it is to let my intentions know we need to research so that you can judge the findings of my research based on my intentions and how I integrated data and all of those things so i wouldn't say i was able to completely disassociate but i put in some effort towards achieving that and by talking about my bias in my dissertation it's like a long over four pages of talking about how i try to solve these problems like the first example of saying talking to an African immigrant that wants me to confirm everything he said and i'm just looking at them like trying to just succeed in some way so it's very tricky but i did my best just a comment here um uh boomaru i'm probably what's your name sorry uh says as long as you are transparent about your positionality you are fine so that was just a comment i just wanted to say thank you i really really really enjoyed this but i also really really enjoyed some of so this was just a very fascinating way of looking at this topic and i have like a million questions that i want to deep go down the rabbit hole about so just thank you for raising awareness about this kind of thing i mean there's so many like ways i could like keep talking to you about this further it's very fascinating because i also ideal with theater and the same issues and online casting and so it's huge all these issues are very huge about representation of people and how yeah but thank you so much it was wonderful thank you thank you thank you thank you for coming in