On the necessity of identity politics we’ll have to disagree — you have taken Denzel Washington outside of a group of ‘those folks’ and placed him into a ‘group of folks’ of your own. That’s the nature of how discourse happens in the current climate.
What Denzel Washington seems to be stating is his desire to speak as an individual and to be taken seriously as such — not to be grouped together with other people without his express permission. I suspect he’s more aligned to the oppression of black men than he is to being a ‘Hollywood folk’ — but it’s important to be very careful about weaponising offence or being insulted on his behalf. Has he claimed to be insulted by the question? Or is that an additional thing that has been felt retrospectively by others?
I think the most important quote in the interview is this one from Jonathan Demme.
“It’s fundamental to a democracy that you’re not only permitted to speak out, you’re supposed to have an opinion, you’re supposed to speak out, you’re supposed to engage in a discourse. And in this way, we arrive at ideas that can move us forward in a positive fashion. I wish everybody could get on TV and talk about how they feel. Maybe we’d learn something”
Nothing about the modern discourse encourages this. It’s become about which group someone is part of and not what they’re actually saying. That’s why I currently (and somewhat tongue in cheek) identify as a Penguin. I could be an English black woman, a Swedish white guy, a team of two mixed race guys working shifts or an elderly trans Japanese geisha. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the quality of this conversation.
When we play the top Trumps game of who is most oppressed by whom, everyone gets to race to the bottom, neutralise the ability of others to speak and thus seize the moral high ground. It flies in the face of individual empowerment and social progress on any given characteristic; be it sex, race, age or class.
Washington schooled Couric when she attempted to take him as an individual and make him part of a collective ideology he didn’t subscribe to. That isn’t to say that he doesn’t have strong feelings about the issues you’ve raised — but that he is only qualified to speak on his own behalf unless he says otherwise. Which he doesn’t seem to be doing at all.
Couric is still a good journalist. Despite being a privileged white woman, she’s allowed to have a shit day and make shit decisions from time to time. All of us do. A compassionate society looks past that and hopes for progress regardless. Policing speech doesn’t help engender any meaningful change. Meanwhile Washington is one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) actors of his generation, that’s all that matters to me. What matters to him is up to him.
There’s currently no cure to members of society basing their modus operandi around collectivist thinking and group identity, but I’d recommend becoming a penguin as a starting point. You have more interesting chats and excellently respectful debates.
