Pitts: Does actress Kristen Bell’s white dinner party matter when it comes to race? Kind of

A few days ago, actress Kristen Bell (“The Good Place,” “Veronica Mars,” “Frozen”) posted a picture on Instagram of herself, her husband, Dax Shepard, and around 30 friends enjoying dinner outdoors at an Idaho resort.

People reacted with amazement to the invite list. The star-studded gathering included actors Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Jason Bateman and Olivia Munn, CNN anchor Jake Tapper; and late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, among several others. BuzzFeed did an admirable job of identifying every celebrity, and their significant others.

The picture drew another reaction, however, which can be summed up by a reader comment below the BuzzFeed story: “This is a very white gathering.”

Yes it was. A meme quickly emerged poking fun at the whiteness of the table which just happened to also include the lead singer of a band named Snow Patrol.

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“Senior leadership & board retreat for urban nonprofit,” one wag on Twitter captioned the viral photo.

Ultimately however, it was a group of friends having a meal. Most people have groups of close friends who look like them, right?

Still, the picture got me to thinking.

Liberal Hollywood?

Looking at the table — which does include restaurateur and TV personality David Chang, who is Asian-American — I had the thought that Hollywood is considered a liberal bastion. It is often bashed as just that by right-wing media and Republican politicians.

But when it comes to race it is really about like many other institutions — good in some ways, regressive in others. It is a hard fact illustrated in 2015 by the #OscarsSowhite protest, when all 20 nominees for the feature awards were white.

The photo also made me think about nepotism. It is not the same as racism but can operate in the same fashion.

You often give a boost to people you know — in any career. You tell them about opportunities or put in a good word for them.

Many white people in Hollywood are legacies from way back, whose parents or grandparents extend back to the Golden Age of cinema. They have an advantage that most Black people and people of color would not have.

I could not help but wonder by looking at Bell’s dinner table who might be excluded when opportunities in Hollywood or in big-time media started rolling around — because they were not at such tables like Bell’s?

Affirmative action vs legacies

I thought too about last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action in college admissions on the idea that people of color should not get a leg up. The Court’s conservative majority simply played blind to systemic racism.

Left fully intact: Legacy admissions, which in some respect are like Hollywood legacies. I.e., if your parents went to that college, you have an advantage.

Many white people’s school legacies carry back to a time when Black people could not even attend a lot of colleges, because of their race, especially here in the South.

Diverse Army

I thought too about the U.S. Army, an institution that is considered more “conservative” but when it comes to race can be called more thoroughly integrated than Hollywood. Especially when it comes to actual leadership roles as illustrated by the ascension of Gen. Lloyd Austin, who is Black, and currently serving as Secretary of Defense.

Let's be clear. The Army is not a dinner party and its rules and regulations are not by the choice of individual soldiers but by non-discrimination policies embedded in federal law, and enforced by same. Therefore the Army recognizes same-sex marriage and will pay for gender-transition surgery, ideas more associated with the “liberal” side of public discourse.

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And the Army like other American institutions has a past that includes discrimination, especially before President Truman came along and said enough was enough. Yet even now, Austin is on a campaign to eliminate racist extremism within the ranks.

I would argue nevertheless that throwing different groups of people together as the Army can have positive effects, and not the least of them is a stronger fighting force.

Childrens’ story time

But there other virtuous effects.

When my wife came here to live several years ago she wondered how she would adjust to this military town near Fort Liberty. One thing that helped the transition was, interestingly enough, library story time for our young children at the Headquarters Library.

We quickly found that our biracial kids fit right in with a diverse set of other children, many biracial themselves, most with military ties. I told Sarah at the time that children's story time looked like the U.N. The same virtuous effect is a part of Cumberland County Schools.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech of Black and white boys and girls holding hands is oft-quoted as an inspiring vision of what could be. In his final book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” he goes deeper: One can easily see he believed that races doing things together was one practical way to directly confront racism.

He recounts that in 1966 he was advocating for Civil Rights marches to remain integrated despite the demands of younger, more militant voices that only Blacks should march. King wrote that racial understanding, like life, is not something we find but we must create. Understanding will not be “ready-made,” he wrote, “ it must be created by the fact of contact.” (emphasis mine)

When people of different races and cultures aren’t in contact with each other, they just make up stuff they believe about the other race. It is often negative and rarely accurate.

Purple people

In 2020, Bell removed herself from a role voicing a biracial character on the animated “Central Park” after protests. The protesters thought the part should have gone to someone of color. Bell said in a statement with the show creators they regretted making people feel like they were excluded or erased. This was in the wake of protests and unrest over the murder of George Floyd.

That same year, Bell and co-writer Benjamin Hart published a children’s book called “The World Needs More Purple People.” There is a picture on the cover of kids of different races holding hands.  The book teaches that people should be “purple,” i.e. beyond “ beyond the political divide of red and blue,”  according to the publishers write-up. These purple people are “everyday superheroes” who bring families and community together in a book that the publisher says “offers a wonderful message about embracing the things that bring us together as humans.”

I have not read the book. It has received excellent reviews. Bell, who has said in interviews she is teaching her daughters anti-racism, and Hart have another book about purple schools.

But the truth of the matter is there are no purple people. (Nor are their red and blue people, but that’s a subject for another time.)

There are however Black people, white people, native people, people of Latin American origin and people of many different backgrounds.

Maybe we all get closer to that pluralistic society King envisioned if we expand our dinner guest lists.

Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Pitts: What does Kristen Bell’s white dinner party say about racism?