Sure, actor Tom Hanks is woke. He votes for Democrats, promotes and fundraises for Democratic candidates, and recently penned a piece for The New York Times promoting racial curriculum in schools and demanding more race-focused projects in Hollywood.
But he’s not woke enough.
At issue here is Hanks’ whiteness. If he wants to be a true “ally” to people of color, writes taxpayer-subsidized NPR TV critic Eric Deggans, Hanks must be “anti-racist.” And to do that, he must recognize that he’s made “fortunes amplifying ideas of white American exceptionalism and heroism” and help to “dismantle” those ideas.
Being “anti-racist,” says Deggans, is more than being a “non-racist,” it “implies action – looking around your universe and taking specific steps to dismantle systemic racism.”
“So I am saying it is time for folks like Hanks to be anti-racist,” the critic declared in a piece published Sunday.
“[I]t’s wonderful that Hanks stepped forward to advocate for teaching about a race-based massacre – indirectly pushing back against all the hyperventilating about critical race theory that’s too often more about silencing such lessons on America’s darkest chapters,” wrote Deggans. “But it is not enough.”
Hanks, the woke critic argued, has “built a career playing righteous white men.” To this end, Hanks is “personally and specifically connected to the elevation of white culture over other cultures.”
Deggans outlined Hanks’ body of work and complained that the actor has “built a sizable part of his career on stories about American white men ‘doing the right thing (emphasis added).'”
Over the years, he has starred in a lot of big movies about historical events, including Saving Private Ryan, Greyhound, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Bridge of Spies and News of the World. He has served as a producer or executive producer on even more films and TV shows based on American history, including Band of Brothers, The Pacific, John Adams and From the Earth to the Moon. He was an executive producer of documentaries such as The Assassination of President Kennedy and The Sixties on CNN.”
In other words, he is a baby boomer star who has built a sizable part of his career on stories about American white men “doing the right thing.”
These stories “leave out Black contribution,” Deggans emphasized.
If Hanks “really wants to make a difference,” the critic wrote, he and other white Hollywood figures “need to talk specifically about how their work has contributed to these problems and how they will change. They need to make specific commitments to changing the conversation in story subjects, casting, and execution. That is the truly hard work of building change.”
“Rather than talk about what ‘historically based fiction entertainment’ must do, why not talk about what Tom Hanks, longtime scripted and documentary executive producer, will do? As a star who can get a movie made just by agreeing to appear in it, what will Tom Hanks, movie star, actually do?” Deggans continued.
“Let’s make part of that conversation how baby boomer filmmakers have made fortunes amplifying ideas of white American exceptionalism and heroism,” the critic said. “And how their responsibility now lies with helping dismantle and broaden the ideas they helped cement in the American mind.”