Lin-Manuel Miranda “In the Heights” Colorism Controversy

Admittedly, I’ve only ever really seen Lin-Manuel Miranda in House and I’ve only heard about the productions he’s worked in and on, but I am familiar with his political stances and how he champions equality and inclusion for all; not just people in the Latino/a/x community,  so when I read about this “controversy” I had to see what all the fuss was about, and while I do agree that diversity and inclusion is a huge topic of discussion today, I think this is one of those issues that people are conflating with the overall issue of racism in America.

Reading about the lack of darker skinned Hispanics in his most recent production “In the Heights”, felt like a trivial argument given the fact that we as spectators don’t know who or what considerations were made when casting this production. I don’t think anyone complaining stopped to think about just how many darker skinned people actually auditioned for the film as I am sure they had a casting call for Latino/a/x and Hispanic actors to come audition for the film—even if they were just extras, I’m sure there was some formal notification that they were looking, but my question is how many people applied?

Another thing no one probably stopped to consider was how many of those darker skinned performers showed up, but weren’t good actors? People think just because someone tries at something they should be given it, but that’s not the case especially when it comes to performing. Millions of dollars are being invested into these productions with the agreement being that all the money would be made back when the production is released to the public and it’s always a gamble.

People thought Ben Affleck and J.Lo in that one movie was going to be a hit, but it turned out to be a box office flop. Same goes for the reboot of Ghostbusters, and while those people might have made their money back, those movies vastly underproduced which is why the producers probably weren’t so eager to do a follow up or put those two back together in another film—obviously they probably broke up before they got the chance to do another film, but still, you get the point.

The point is that there’s a lot that we don’t see, and I get it, there’s a huge under representation of darker skinned people in film and TV, but what are people supposed to do if the people who are darker skinned just aren’t talented enough to make the film and/or are in short supply? Not everyone wants to be in movies or on TV, so is it Lin-Manuel Miranda’s job to go across the country and the world to find actors for a role? I mean where do we draw the line with looking at something from the outside and saying it’s racist before we start to actually ask questions about how people were cast, where they were cast, how long was the casting call, and how many darker skinned people showed up?

Those are all questions that I would need answers to before I jump on the bandwagon of shaming someone who wants, and fights, for more equality and representation for his community, and the fight can’t be all on him; people have to go out actually want to do the work as well because as talented as Lin-Manuel Miranda is, he can’t just make talented dark skinned actors fall out of the sky, they have to audition just like everyone else.

At the end of the day, I think Lin-Manuel Miranda is a good man, and I don’t say that about celebrities often because I don’t know any of them personally to speak on the content of their character, but Lin-Manuel seems to really care about his community, and if this were some white guy with a track record of only hiring white people, I’d be right there with everyone saying we need more diversity, but I think in this case people need to cut the man some slack because he’s probably only trying to work with the best of what’s given and what he can find.