There’s Just One Hitch, Will Smith: Examining Title VII, Race, Casting, and Discrimination on the Fortieth Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia

Authors

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University School of LawFollow

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2007

ISSN

0043-650X

Publisher

University of Wisconsin Law School

Language

en-US

Abstract

In this Symposium Essay, I use Loving v. Virginia as a backdrop for exploring why our society allows, without legal challenge, customer preference or discrimination to unduly influence casting decisions for actors paired in romantic couples in movies and television. In so doing, I examine how existing anti-discrimination law in employment can and should be used to address these improper influences within the entertainment industry. In Part I of the Essay, I first survey the growing practice of casting intraminority couples casting in films and television and examine how such casting, despite its appeal on the surface, may work to further entrench racial hierarchies in our society. In particular, I focus on how this new form of multicultural couples casting can reinforce the racial hierarchies that existed in the anti-miscegenation statutes that were struck down in Loving v. Virginia, statutes that were struck down because they promoted white supremacy by prohibiting interracial marriages between Whites and non-Whites but not prohibiting marriages with non-Whites of different races. In Part II, I detail statutory law, specifically Title VII, and case law regarding employment discrimination based on customers' preferences to investigate how and when, given the First Amendment, current law can be used to eliminate discrimination through casting in the entertainment industry. This Essay concludes by highlighting the need to and importance of challenging general societal practices that work to maintain racial boundaries of love and intimacy.

Comments

Symposium: Intimacy, Race, Marriage, and the Meanings of Equality: Perspectives on the 40th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia

Recommended Citation

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, There’s Just One Hitch, Will Smith: Examining Title VII, Race, Casting, and Discrimination on the Fortieth Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia , in 2007 Wisconsin Law Review 319 (2007).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/322