Clifton Duncan via Clifton Duncan YouTube

Actor Clifton Duncan lamented the “‘Woke’ era in entertainment” and how it destroys talented women and minority actors while also explaining why actors “feel justified in insulting” their audiences.

RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON – Kelly Marie Tran pictured wearing dress by Thai Nguyen. Photo courtesy of Disney. ©.

In a post to X responding to a Facebook post from Geek League of America claiming that Daisy Ridley, Amandla Stenberg, Kelly Marie Tran, Moses Ingram, and Jodie Turner-Smith deserve apologies for how they are treated, Duncan stated, “The legacy of the ‘Woke’ era in entertainment has been to sacrifice the careers and reputations of talented women and minorities by placing them in doomed projects that will inevitably draw severe backlash.”

“The ‘diversity’ of these shows is the main selling point. When the audience rejects the show they’re then accused of hating ‘diversity’…as opposed to wooden dialogue, bland cinematography, lackluster plotting, infidelity to source material, etc,” he continued.

Daisy Ridley as Rey in The Force Awakens (2015), Lucasfilm

Next, he wrote, “The performers–the most visible aspect of the project–then have to swallow the pain of a poor reception, a tarnished professional ‘brand,’ and viral memes and YouTube videos trashing their work.

“Worse, their self-limiting worldview that they live in an oppressive society that loathes them is heavily reinforced…which is a true tragedy,” he added. “99% of actors are hired hands trying to get all they can from a VERY stressful industry where the next job is NEVER guaranteed–even if you’re at the top of the food chain.”

“There will always be crazies in any fandom; the word ‘fan’ is short for FANATIC. No sane person condones abuse or harassment, and none of these performers deserve that,” he noted.

Reva (Moses Ingram) in Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.

Duncan then declared, “But I agree these artists DO deserve apologies. They deserve apologies for being tokenized. They deserve apologies for being weaponized against fans. They deserve apologies for being used as shields against poor executive decisions.”

“But most importantly: They deserve apologies from the Bluegeoisie for being reduced to cannon fodder in a culture war,” he concluded.

In a subsequent post he explained why actors insult their fanbases, “Today many actors aren’t performing for a general audience, they’re vying for approval from their peers and from the minority of Americans who think like themselves. That’s why they feel justified in insulting you—you are on the Wrong Side of History. What’s astounding to me is that there seem to be no PR people smart enough to make them stop shtting on consumers.”

 

Duncan’s comments about minorities and women being placed in doomed projects echoes what Thomas Sowell has repeatedly said about affirmative action. In a discussion with Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institute, Sowell explained that affirmative action “put many black students with all the prerequisites for success into places where they were almost guaranteed to fail.”

He then referenced his own experience at Cornell as an example, “I’ll go all the way back to 1965 when I was teaching at Cornell. They suddenly brought in large numbers of black students under special programs. And in an ultimately short time, half of them were on academic probation for academic deficiencies. And so I went over to the administration building and looked up their SAT scores. The average black student at Cornell at that time was at the 75th percentile.”

Thomas Sowell via Thomas Sowell YouTube

Sowell continued noting that those SAT scores were “better than three-quarters of other American students who took the SAT.” However, he pointed out that, “the average student in the Cornell Liberal Arts College was at the 99th percentile. And so, one, you have the students who simply do not graduate. And so there’s no great gain from flunking out of an elite institution.”

He then declared that Cornel spent four years “making failures out of them.”

From there, he explained how this was not unique to Cornell, “Back when we had the, later on in the 20th century at Berkeley, they had Black and Hispanic kids who were admitted there. They had test scores just slightly above the national average. The White students had test scores far above that, and the Asian students had it above the White students. And the great bulk of those Black students, an absolute majority failed to graduate. So they came on campus, wasted some years of their lives, some opportunities they may have had somewhere else.”

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – MAY 21: The Acolyte’s Amandla Stenberg poses at Disneyland on May 21, 2024 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images for Disney)

Sowell then shared that after California voters voted to end preferential admission more minority students entered the university system.

“The actual data show that the number of Black students in the UC system barely changed at all. What happened was that they stopped going to Berkeley and UCLA. They went to the other campuses where their proficiency was like that of the other students. In the wake of that, over a four-year period, there were a thousand more minority students graduating from the system than there were under affirmative action,” he stated.

Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

What do you make of Duncan’s commentary about the woke era in entertainment?