British newcomer John Boyega isn’t here for any of your racism. Speaking with the New York Times, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens star addressed head-on the people who are criticizing the concept of a Black stormtrooper. “I just don’t get it,” Boyega said. “You guys got every single alien in this movie imaginable to man. With tentacles, five eyes. Aliens that, if they existed, we’d definitely have an issue…Yet what you want to do is fixate on another human being’s color. You need to go back to school and unlearn what you have learned.”
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The Nigerian-British actor said that he wasn’t letting the racists get him down. Discriminating against people because of the color of their skin, he said, is essentially a moot point. “I am grounded in who I am, and I am a confident Black man,” he said. “A confident, Nigerian, Black, chocolate man…To get into a serious dialogue with people who judge a person based on the melanin in their skin? They’re stupid, and I’m not going to lose sleep over people.”
He also shared a few thoughts on Hollywood’s glaring diversity problems. He blames the industry on breeding the racist critics. “It’s Hollywood’s fault for letting this so far that when a Black person or a female or someone from a different cultural group is cast in a movie, we have to have debates as to whether they’re placed there just to meet a [quota],” he said. “I don’t hear you guys saying that when Brad Pitt is there. When Tom Cruise is there. Hell, when Shia LaBeouf is there, you guys ain’t saying that. That is just blatant racism.”
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