Mo'Nique won an Oscar, then got 'blackballed'. Of course it's about race

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/19/monique-won-oscar-blackballed-about-race

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I always wonder if one thing I say will ruin my career.

Black people know that not all of us are going to succeed in predominately white spaces and that, in order to be successful, we have to comfort and assuage whiteness and white gatekeepers. We can’t afford to be like Katherine Heigl and Megan Fox, who badmouthed their directors and stayed working. We can’t be like white actors who variously physically assaulted people, threatened production teams, and mouthed off to the police, yet still accrue credits to their name. Instead, as Mo’Nique found out, we get, “Hey, what happened to…?”. We get blackballed.

Mo’Nique told The Hollywood Reporter (and Lee Daniels essentially confirmed the backstory of it):

I got a call from Lee Daniels…And he said to me, “Mo’Nique , you’ve been blackballed.” I said, “Why?” And he said, “Because you didn’t play the game.’

Black people know what “the game” is.

Mo’Nique is one of the most successful African American women in the business: she starred in her own comedy show, The Parkers, for five years and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her terrifying role in Precious. But after her win in 2010, what happened? Almost nothing, which is a far cry from what one might expect for an Oscar winner (with the possible exception of another black actor, Cuba Gooding, Jr).

I’ve heard tales from radio hosts and celebrity gossipers that Mo’Nique’s supposed bad attitude led to her blacklisting, and I almost fell for it, almost chalked it up to another black woman being ungrateful for her opportunities ... until I heard Mo’Nique speak for herself: then it all became clear that Mo’Nique was not an ingrate, but a woman who knew her self-worth before someone tried to take it from her.

When Mo’Nique asked Lee Daniels what kind of game she lost, he didn’t respond. He didn’t have to respond because he figured that she was supposed to “just know” like any other black person in America – and she did. She didn’t “campaign” enough for her Oscar, and she refused to accept disrespect.

Whoever those people are who say, “Mo’Nique is difficult,” those people are either heartless, ruthless or treat people like they’re worthless. And that’s unacceptable.

We often label women, especially women of color, as “difficult” when they are astute enough to know not to get fooled into accepting anything beneath them. As Mo’Nique said, as a Baltimore native, “you learn not to let anybody take advantage of you.” She was not willing to submit to whatever was thrown at her, but even I fell for the stereotype that a woman is at fault for her career failures instead of paying attention to the language with which the media tars women who refuse to accept the unacceptable: “difficult”, “tacky”, “tactless”. Name one male actor was labeled as such for demanding more than the minimum and became obscure for it.

Daniels, who’s reportedly continued trying to cast her in projects only to be overruled by the money people, didn’t want Mo’Nique to make him say what I’m writing now because – even though “thegame” is often “kitchen talk” amongst black people – he attained a seat at a table from which she was cast out. He got to feast, and she has to watch from the outside while tapping on the door for him to let her in, to shed some light on why she can’t have some either.

Perhaps this is what my parents meant when they warned us about “crabs in a barrel”: only a few crabs can escape out of the barrel, and Daniels got lucky.

Black people know that there’s a game, that we’re all expected to smile and shake hands and play nice, but we can never forget who created the game and who sets the rules – and that any deviation from those rules looks different on us than it does on someone white and male. Mo’Nique wasn’t blackballed because she didn’t play “the game”; she was blackballed because she is both black and a woman, and she didn’t play the game.