The Liberty Daily 
When entertainment stars reach a certain level in their careers, they start to enjoy the luxury of no longer needing to bow to the woke mob. Dave Chappelle demonstrated this earlier in the week with a Grammy win despite being completely unwoke. Now, a member of Tinseltown’s elite class has broken from the race-bating paradigm of the industry to make a statement that’s actually quite logical.
According to Variety:
Idris Elba is tired of being put in a box. The actor, who is returning as his iconic detective Luther in Netflix’s upcoming movie “Luther: The Fallen Son,” recently told Esquire UK that he has stopped calling himself “a Black actor” after it became a constrictive label on his career.
“Of course, I’m a member of the Black community,” Elba said. “You say a prominent one. But when I go to America, I’m a prominent member of the British community. ‘Oh, U.K.’s in the house!’ If we spent half the time not talking about the differences but the similarities between us, the entire planet would have a shift in the way we deal with each other.”
“As humans, we are obsessed with race,” Elba continued. “And that obsession can really hinder people’s aspirations, hinder people’s growth. Racism should be a topic for discussion, sure. Racism is very real. But from my perspective, it’s only as powerful as you allow it to be. I stopped describing myself as a Black actor when I realized it put me in a box. We’ve got to grow. We’ve got to. Our skin is no more than that: it’s just skin. Rant over.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Elba recalled how he decided to become an actor because he “didn’t see Black people doing it and I wanted to change that.”
“I did it because I thought that’s a great profession and I could do a good job at it,” he added. “As you get up the ladder, you get asked what it’s like to be the first Black to do this or that. Well, it’s the same as it would be if I were white. It’s the first time for me. I don’t want to be the first Black. I’m the first Idris.”
It’s sad that such statements are generally dangerous in Hollywood, but welcome to 2023. We’ll see if Elba is able to stick with this perspective without being torn down by his industry’s powerbrokers. Minorities in the industry will likely appreciate what he said, but the “white guilt” crowd won’t see it that way. They’ll attack him just as readily as fake feminists have gone after J.K. Rowling for not embracing transgender lunacy.
Hopefully, Elba will weather the coming storm as well as Rowling has.
