Cinderella (2015) and How People of Color Were Uninvited to the Ball

Every once in a while the BNP staff encounters a black nerd problem so ludicrous it requires more than one of us to handle it together. So with our powers combined, this is Jordan Calhoun and Lauren Bullock with our take on the upcoming Cinderella (2015). “Lauren, Is It Just Me?” – Jordan Back in August, Cinderella on Broadway announced its first African-American lead to wear the glass slippers, Keke Palmer. Your standard reaction to the diverse casting was probably something like, “Oh, that’s nice,” or “It’s a little weird we’re still having ‘firsts’ like this in 2014,” but somewhere in another building, Cinderella’s movie casting director leapt from her chair, fingered through her filing cabinet, and studied their lineup like, “ah shit.” Disney released their official trailer for 2015’s reboot of the Cinderella and it has the diversity of a Klansmen meeting. Introducing the classic fairy tale to a new generation of children, Disney tossed the memory of 1997 for a cast more homogeneous than identical twins. Hollywood made a Dorian Grey-style wager for Sony Pictures’ Annie to be greenlit, and one day someone will find the Blu-Ray of Cinderella in an attic getting older and whiter. In fact, the only non-white person in the trailer is the same forgettable black throwaway character from season 2 of Game of Thrones. The casting director, let’s call her Lucy Bevan, frantically fanned through piles of headshots for her token before Robb Stark walked in her office like “I know just …