White Actors and Actresses Portraying Racial Minorities

In many films, especially older films, the roles of racial minority characters have been played by white actors and actresses. This was particularly true of Native American characters in older Westerns. These roles of Native Americans that are played by white actors are infamous for their stereotypical portrayals. The speech that these actors use is disturbingly stereotypical with words that have been used in many films throughout the history of cinema. The mistakes made in regard to many of the cultural aspects of Native American life are also very disturbing. In many interviews with friends who are Native American concerning this problematic cinematic behavior, the common consensus is that the majority of the mainstream media in the past—and occasionally in the present—has misinterpreted many cultural traditions of Native American tribes as well as having done a great injustice by them.





A particularly famous instance of a white woman playing a minority character is in John Cromwell’s 1942 hit movie, Son of Fury. In this film, the famous Gene Tierney plays a woman native to a tropical island opposite the equally famous Tyrone Power. Tierney’s character is named Eve by Benjamin Blake (Power) when he “discovers” their tribe on the remote island. Eve is incredibly hypersexualized within the film, and spends the majority of her time trying to “get in Ben’s pants” as it were. She is also shown to be inferior to him through her use of simple sounds to communicate, whereas her male co-star speaks English.

While researching for this blog I was disheartened to find that so many minority roles have been played by white actors and actresses. I was even more disheartened when I watched these films and rarely found anything that was not stereotypical of the ethnicities of the characters. It is my hope that the media will no longer use white actors and actresses to play the parts of racial minorities and will, instead, find actors who are of the same race and ethnicity as the characters which they are portraying.