Hello, I have a little personal revelation for everyone here.
I'm a white guy, and a lifelong Star Trek fan. Exactly 30 years ago, when I was 16, my 'Trek Gang' of friends made a TNG/TOS fan film. I was by far the youngest, and definitely not in charge of the 'production', and when the straws were drawn, I ended up being cast as Geordi...complete with makeup. It was not the part I was after, but I was desperate to be involved, I thought Geordi was cool, all the other parts had been cast, and (this was the rural Southwest in 1989), our group of friends did not happen to have a black man in it at the time. Also, we weren't going to make the film without Geordi in it, and (in an example of charmingly misplaced moral reasoning) we weren't going to just use the uniform, because we felt that would have amounted to making Geordi white. You might say it was a perfect case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. In any case, the result was a brainless teenage white kid wearing blackface and getting filmed doing it.
I'm not asking whether or not it was acceptable. Obviously it wasn't. It was a colossal f***up. We just had our collective heads so far up our asses that we didn't realize it.
The film was shot on VHS in a homemade set in a trailer, and never really seen outside our circle of friends. This was several years pre-internet. I've never talked about it with anyone else. But as explosive as the issue has suddenly become, I'm interested in people's opinions.
Have any of you ever done anything like this? Should I forget about it? Never speak of it again? Quit my job, stop trying to amount to anything, and live on the streets with my head hung in shame? What?
I'm a white guy, and a lifelong Star Trek fan. Exactly 30 years ago, when I was 16, my 'Trek Gang' of friends made a TNG/TOS fan film. I was by far the youngest, and definitely not in charge of the 'production', and when the straws were drawn, I ended up being cast as Geordi...complete with makeup. It was not the part I was after, but I was desperate to be involved, I thought Geordi was cool, all the other parts had been cast, and (this was the rural Southwest in 1989), our group of friends did not happen to have a black man in it at the time. Also, we weren't going to make the film without Geordi in it, and (in an example of charmingly misplaced moral reasoning) we weren't going to just use the uniform, because we felt that would have amounted to making Geordi white. You might say it was a perfect case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. In any case, the result was a brainless teenage white kid wearing blackface and getting filmed doing it.
I'm not asking whether or not it was acceptable. Obviously it wasn't. It was a colossal f***up. We just had our collective heads so far up our asses that we didn't realize it.
The film was shot on VHS in a homemade set in a trailer, and never really seen outside our circle of friends. This was several years pre-internet. I've never talked about it with anyone else. But as explosive as the issue has suddenly become, I'm interested in people's opinions.
Have any of you ever done anything like this? Should I forget about it? Never speak of it again? Quit my job, stop trying to amount to anything, and live on the streets with my head hung in shame? What?
