Hero assumed white until proven otherwise
Anderson Cooper 360 Blog ‘Missing’ Marine from 9/11 comes forward
The new Oliver Stone movie, “World Trade Center,” tells the story of two Port Authority police officers — Sgt. John McLoughlin and Officer Will Jimeno — who were found by two former U.S. Marines working as volunteers. But the moviemakers only knew the whereabouts of one of the Marines; the other had seemingly vanished.
Because the moviemakers (and most everyone else) didn’t know much about the “missing” Marine, the actor playing him is a white man. In real life, Sgt. Thomas is African-American.
Comments
perhaps the simplist explanation has something to do with the fact that all things being equal, the probability that the soldier was white is about 80-90% by population statistics.
Posted by: michael | August 20, 2006 7:47 PM
Thanks for writing. According to this Marine Corps demographics report (PDF), the chance that any given Marine is white is about 2 in 3. The chance that any two are white is a bit better than 2 in 5. So if probability had informed the casting, it's not likely we would have had two white heroes.
Posted by: adam | August 20, 2006 8:04 PM
I don't think that's an accurate explanation. The point seems to be that culture falls back on white dominance.
But, in fact, white is not dominant behaviorally.
Posted by: doug | August 20, 2006 9:54 PM