You Don’t Have to Divide to Conquer

While I appreciate the attention given to our inaugural awards for aspiring minority television writers (Morning Report, Wednesday), I deeply regret terminology used to characterize the spirit of the awards ceremonies and the awards themselves. To say that Danny Glover and I lashed out at the entertainment industry is to misdefine both the intent of this awards competition and the message I tried to convey to the winners.

Yes, the thesis of our script competition is to hold out opportunity to young people who might have despaired of it. Yes, it is conceived to show others how they might also extend opportunity and the possibility of opportunity. These young people need to know that their talent has a chance to succeed before they will have the courage to exercise it, or before they have the courage even to try.

However, it is very misleading to suggest that our effort to achieve this is some kind of angry outcry against an adversarial establishment. We all know there is no such thing as equal opportunity . . . anywhere. There will always be some advantage of birth or some advantage of talent tilting the playing field. That is why the most productive energy is that which attempts to level that playing field to give all talent and aspiration as fair a chance as possible.

The look of hope and pride and esteem in the eyes of our initial group of contest winners was proof to me that this contest is worth all of the effort and love that my wife, Donna, my associates in our production company, Longridge Enterprises, and I are putting into it. The real victory is in persuading young people that somewhere someone is interested in opening a door for them. The victory, as well, is in showing others who share this industry with us that there is personal, creative and eventually economic reward in opening doors which may be rusted shut or in building them where they do not now exist.

One of the professors advising some of the applicant writers told me that, in a way, every student who entered the contest is a winner, learning something from the exercise of writing a script and learning, as well, that opportunity can exist, that there is reason to dare.

The Robert Guillaume Script Writing Awards competition is about making positive steps instead of negative allegation. I did not say “there is no such thing as equal opportunity in the entertainment industry.” What I believe is that railing against injustice, while extremely attractive as an option, is far too limiting as a mechanism to produce change. I would rather irrigate the land than curse the desert.

Yes, I do want “the industry to change,” if for no other reason than that I am weary of the colloquy which masquerades as meaningful exchange year after year under the heading of the plight of minorities in “the industry.” We are about due soon for another of those dubious exercises. Enough already.

What I tried to express at our awards ceremony is that we are the industry, each and every one of us. If we do not individually and personally institute change, how can it occur? Surely, the solution to some of these problems can no longer be absolute mystery. Our effort at Longridge is not unique. There are others. There needs to be more.

And, like democracy, this is a task that is never finished. It requires constant and growing vigilance and maintenance.

With our competition and in our ceremonies, we were not trying to embarrass the industry, but rather we hoped to help it open a door to that vast reservoir of creative talent which is out there waiting for some flickering sign of encouragement.

My comments at the awards ceremony dealt with my own undaunted belief when I was a student at Washington University in St. Louis that some facet of the establishment was going to flash a welcome sign to me . . . yes, Robert, we have a place for your talent.

The welcome sign never came. But I never stopped believing that eventually it would.

With our award competition, I’m just trying to show others in our business how easy, how urgent and, yes, how profitable it is to plug in that welcome sign. While it would be Candidian to suggest that Hollywood is that one singular place of perfect justice, this business abounds with people of good will, people perfectly capable and eager to tear down the scarred old walls and build something new and solid with the mortar of equality.

I was not lashing out. I was reaching out.

See letters to Counterpunch, F4.