The new push for diversity and inclusion is undercutting the ability to tell deep and lasting stories. As a screenwriter and producer, I watch a lot of movies and television. I watch a wide variety to see who is doing it well and who is doing it poorly. I try to think like a craftsman, learning from my fellow craftsmen. Here’s the lesson as of late. It’s easier to blame racism for people’s inability to connect than to present great characters.

Producers are trying to solve poor writing with inclusion initiatives. But the reality is, people connect with people that don’t look like them all of the time. This push to only see the external qualities of the actor and to then complain that an audience can only connect with someone who looks like them is ridiculous. People are people.

A great story, a great actor, a great character, connects across cultures and supposed “racial” differences. Look at the universality of Shakespeare. The best version of Julias Caesar is set in South Africa. As you like it, directed by Kenneth Branagh, was reset in Japan, and it works brilliantly. The “interracial” cast of Much Ado About Nothing, including casting Denzel and Keanu as brothers, doesn’t cause any problems. The story, the acting, and the filmmaking are all brilliant. Othello, and most recently Macbeth, have gotten the “interracial” treatment, and you are missing out if you haven’t seen them.

These films work because they simply cast the best actors and actresses that they could get. There wasn’t a push for diversity, there was a push for excellence. They served the audience, not the ideology of the zeitgeist. Because if you look at Cumberbatch or Tennant as Hamlet and think the remarkable fact is the all white cast, then your soul is dry and crunchy and needs to be rescued from your Twitter habit.

God created people in His image and, therefore, we are able to connect with one another. Across race, language, tribe, nationality, and every visible difference. The inability to connect with people that are not just like you is a spiritual blindness with pride at the root. Hollywood’s diversity quotas are simply more evidence that they are happy to flush their own relevance down the toilet for an ideology. As Loor’s Chief Content Officer, I look for honest stories from great storytellers who want to tell the truth beautifully. Because I have a dream that my movies will one day be shown in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their creator’s skin but by the quality of their characters.

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