{"id":47898,"date":"2016-06-22T19:19:08","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T19:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47898"},"modified":"2016-06-22T19:19:08","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T19:19:08","slug":"dwayne-johnson-race-shifter-in-a-post-racial-world-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47898","title":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson \u2013 \u201cRace Shifter\u201d in a \u201cPost-Racial\u201d World?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dwayne Johnson \u2013 \u201cRace Shifter\u201d in a \u201cPost-Racial\u201d World?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Shadow and Act: On Film, Television and Web Content of Africa and Its Diaspora<\/a>
\n2016-06-13<\/p>\n

Sergio Mims<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nDwayne Johnson<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

With \u201cCentral Intelligence<\/a>\u201d hitting theaters this weekend, starring Dwayne Johnson<\/a> and Kevin Hart<\/a>, a conversation worth having\u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure we\u2019ve all privy to all the chatter about how we\u2019re now living in a so-called \u201cpost-racial\u201d society. Though I think most of us would respond to that with a \u201cYeah right!\u201d But things are changing, albeit slowly. And it dawned on me, with Johnson becoming one of Hollywood\u2019s most dependable actors today, starring in blockbuster after blockbuster, and carrying some of them almost alone, that he\u2019s the one person who could be an example of this \u201cpost-racial\u201d utopia we\u2019re supposed to be living in.<\/p>\n

It should be very obvious by now that Johnson has been positioning himself to become a major movie star. He easily could have gone on to be a B-movie<\/a> actor, content with taking supporting roles in action\/exploitation films, and starring in direct-to-video movies, like some of his former WWE<\/a> cohorts. But Johnson has much higher aspirations. And it\u2019s not just the film projects that he\u2019s attached himself to; either by design or by happenstance, it\u2019s also how he\u2019s been perceived racially by the public. He has become a \u201crace shifter\u201d for lack of a better word.<\/p>\n

Through his obviously ethnic, but not clearly defined looks (he\u2019s black Canadian\/Samoan), he has managed to become \u201cidentified\u201d as it were, by different audiences, as different things, and has used that to his advantage, whether intentionally or not. I should say that, of course, we identify him as a black actor here on S&A<\/em>, or else we wouldn\u2019t be covering him at all. And Johnson has never obscured, or refused to acknowledge his bi-racial heritage, unlike let\u2019s say Vin Diesel<\/a>, who has seemingly gone out of his way to not publicly acknowledge his mixed heritage, preferring to instead let people think he\u2019s, perhaps, Italian…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dwayne Johnson \u2013 \u201cRace Shifter\u201d in a \u201cPost-Racial\u201d World? Shadow and Act: On Film, Television and Web Content of Africa and Its Diaspora 2016-06-13 Sergio Mims Dwayne Johnson With \u201cCentral Intelligence\u201d hitting theaters this weekend, starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, a conversation worth having\u2026 I\u2019m sure we\u2019ve all privy to all the chatter about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,20],"tags":[1702,11479,11481],"class_list":["post-47898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-dwayne-johnson","tag-sergio-mims","tag-shadow-and-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47899,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47898\/revisions\/47899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}