Kevin Costner: People Invoke Race to Shut Down Discussion
Kevin Costner‘s new movie, Black or White, deals with race and family issues in a story about a custody battle over a biracial child. So in interviews about the movie, Costner has been opining about race in America, given recent events in Ferguson and elsewhere. He says the movie is a very honest look at race; in one scene, when his character admits to using the n-word, he says, “It’s not my first thought that counts. It’s my second, third and fourth that will define if I am a racist.”
Costner talked a lot about race, profiling, Ferguson, etc. in a recent interview with Variety’s PopPolitics show. He shared his thoughts on some of the Ferguson media coverage and said, “If anything that was covered was a lie, I resent that. That feels as big as any crime as any committed.”
And he also had this to say about people invoking race in conversation:
“A lot of times a conversation gets stopped dead in its tracks because if somebody thinks they are losing, race comes up even if the word has no place in the discussion. It trumps the point someone is trying to make, or what they are trying to talk about and it has no place there. Race has a place in our country and a terrible one, and it is one we’re still grappling with, but oftentimes we just don’t how to talk about it and if someone feels they are perhaps losing the argument the conversation breaks up, it stops, it just comes to a shrieking halt.”
You can listen to selections from Costner’s interview below, via PopPolitics:
[image via s_bukley]
— —
