In The Heights, the highly anticipated TV adaptation of the hit Broadway musical from Lin Manuel Miranda, directed by Jon M. Chu, dropped its trailer over a year ago and folks had questions.
In sum: Where are all of the leading dark-skinned Afro-Latinx folks?
Granted, the trailer (and film) showcased Black dancers and there were certainly Black women in the hair salon, but where are the dark-skinned Black Latinx folks with a storyline? After all, this film is placed in Washington Heights, N.Y., right?!
(cont.)
How hard is it to just say: “We didn’t intentionally cast light-skinned Latinos, but subconsciously we had an incorrect/misinformed image of what Latino looks like and didn’t realize our idea of who best embodied a character excluded Afro-Latinos.”
I can’t believe Melissa Berrera said with her whole chest that there were a lot of dark-skinned people in the audition process but she and the rest of these beige Latinos were the people who embodied the roles the best.
Sis, you embodied the roles the best because the casting team had an image of what Latino looks like. Because that’s what Latino always looks like in popular culture. Everybody at *my* Dominican barber shop would fail the paper bag test so I know what Upper Manhattan looks like and who embodies these characters. Most of them do not look like JLo.
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