Hollywood's Diversity Problem, Making of the Migrant Crisis

Does Hollywood Still Have a Diversity Problem After 2019’s Historic Oscars?  Guests: Nancy Wang Yuen, PhD, Professor of Sociology, Biola University and author of “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism”; Maryann Erigha, PhD, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, University of Georgia and author of “The Hollywood Jim Crow: The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry”  You wouldn't know that Hollywood has a diversity problem if you just looked at the 2019 Oscars. Three of the four acting awards went to people of color (Regina King, Mahershala Ali and Rami Malek). Groundbreaking African American director and writer Spike Lee finally won a competitive Oscar (for BlacKkKlansman). Costume Designer Ruth Carther and Production Designer Hannah Beachler are the first African American women to win Oscars in their fields (both for Black Panther). And that's just a partial list of the diversity-related firsts this year. So, maybe #OscarsSoWhite is ancient history? Hollywood is now colorblind? Well, it’s more complicated than that.  How America Made the Central American Refugee Crisis Guest: Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo, PhD, Professor of Latin American & Latinx Studies, NYU, author of "Indian Given" President Trump says the threat is so great, he’s declared a national emergency to address it. We can debate how serious the threat actually is and whether a wall will help. What we don’t hear discussed is how we helped cause the violent situation people in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are fleeing. That brutal gang MS-13 Trump talks about? It started in America as a direct result of our interference in civil wars in Central America. Then we shipped those gang members back to their home countries –even though they’d lived in America basically all their lives. So the question at the heart of our conversation this hour is a moral one: Do we have the right to turn away women and children now fleeing those violent gangs?