Argumentative Essay

   In Stuart Hall's Essay ,"What is "Black" in Black culture", he makes a point that the space for minorities in popular culture is extremely constrained and regulated. I agreed with him and decided to base my first argumentative essay on this topic. This control on the space allowed can be seen in almost every part of popular culture, from film and television to music and theatre.
   It's easy to see that minorities don't get to play as much roles as white actors in mainstream film. A quick  glance at the most popular movies in America shows that minorities have only minor supporting roles if they have any roles at all. I suppose, there are some exceptions. Black actors like Will Smith and Denzel Washington have gained a lot of fame and are known for being very good leading men. However, there are no latino or native americans with the same amount of fame as them in mainstream film. Most minorities are forced to play sidekicks to main actors or to provide comic relief. Action films such as The Fifth Element, Lethal Weapon and the recent Cop Out all feature African-Americans playing the comic relief sidekick to a white leading actor. Almost no films have this formula played out in reverse and gain mainstream success.
   This constraint can also be seen in music. African-Americans only become famous when performing rap and hip-hop but are not anywhere near as well-known when they branch out into other genres. Other minorities are almost unheard of in the mainstream. Native-Americans have no famous singers or performers and latinos are almost as under-represented. When you look at whites, you see that they have much more freedom in the cultural space than the minorities, while still retaining fame. Eminem and Robin Thicke have both gained faming performing rap and R&B respectively, two genres that have traditionally been considered to be "Black".
   As it stands, minorities don't have a lot of freedom in their cultural space as whites. Hopefully, this will change in the coming years as the internet and a freer flow of information allows minorities to gain attention with greater ease than in past eras.