Laugh So You Don't Cry at This New Web Series on Hollywood Racism

Amani Starnes is a working actress who happens to be racially ambiguous. Hollywood is basically the Baskin-Robbins of racism (so! many! flavors!). Mix the two well and you get a forehead slapping concoction that would be hilarious if it weren’t tragically true. You get the new web series “The United Colors of Amani.”

The show’s star writes,

I’m an actress on the margins of Hollywood. If you watch live TV or sports, you’ve probably seen me a thousand times, walking a dog in a Jack in the Box commercial or getting into my car after a marathon in a Honda commercial. I’m usually cast as an “ethnically ambiguous” person— that’s the actual phrase on the audition sheet. My job oscillates between performing blackness, performing some other race, and performing some kind of post-racial idea of American-ness.

After watching this UCA episode about a super racist backup dancer audition, I reached out to her and asked if the windsuit-wearing mustache creep were based on a real person, and she responded,

I don’t want to make your skin crawl, but the windsuit guy is an amalgam of about 4 creepy dudes with whom I’ve had these kind of encounters—all equally over the top and inappropriate (worse actually).

TOO LATE, AMANI. My skin’s already crawling — but I can’t wait to catch the next episode.