Marlon Wayans On Racism In Hollywood: I Never Pull The Race Card!

Wayans, now 40 years old, sat down with AllHipHop to talk about his upcoming film ‘A Haunted House’, which he is producing, directing and starring in.

Eventually the line of questioning led to ‘G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’ and if Wayans, who starred in the first film, looks forward to the second installment.

“I’m not in it. Rip Cord steps on a landmine. They blew his black ass up,” said Wayans in a half joking manner. “The last one they realized the black guy was the hero of the movie. So, they said ‘You know what? We’re going to do the sequel just so we can fix that. Let’s kill the black guy’.”

Rip Cord, a black character, was the one who saved the day at the end of “G.I. Joe” and he was romantically involved with the character Scarlet, played by Rachel Nichols. Rip Cord and Duke, played by Channing Tatum, are actually more like dual heroes in the film. I thought the character Rip Cord was a leap forward in terms of how Hollywood perceived black heroes. Apparently, Hollywood did not although ‘G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra’ made $302 million worldwide.

“I always say to people that there are lessons and blessings,” he explained. “It’s one of the greatest blessings ever for me to be written out of that franchise because it gives me a chance to be creative. I hold my head up. I don’t sulk. I put my head down and made my first movie. I obviously had a ball making it, and this is like my coming out party. This is my ‘Control’ album. Hopefully it’s not that bad album Janet put out there.”

To be black and working in Hollywood is a test of will and patience. The issues of racism is bound to come up when black actors are passed for parts or killed off early. Yet, Wayans has a different way of looking at it. “Here’s the thing about me, I don’t blame it on race. I blame it on taste,” he explained. “When people didn’t know what hip-hop was, and even to this day, they thought it was an urban, black thing. But urban is not black. The reality is that young white kids are buying hip-hop music. The studios think that because you’re black, you don’t have overseas. But I’m overseas. All of my movies have grossed overseas. ‘Scary Movie’ made $167 million overseas. All of these movies are made on foreign value and they don’t think there’s any foreign value in black films and stars, and there missing the opportunity for black people to do well for them because they don’t even try.”

“But I never blame the race card because when you pull the race card what you allow yourself to do is give up and allow yourself to have an excuse,” said Marlon. “I don’t give blame, I accept blame so that I can
Source: Carlton Jordan

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