actor Archives - The Race Card Project

“You don’t look Iranian!” “I am.”

May 15, 2021May 25, 2021 actor, Chicago, IL, Iranian, Middle-Eastern, Rom Barkhordar, what are you, you don't look

Rom Barkhordar,
Chicago, IL

This was a brief exchange with someone I just met who, to his defense, had a few beers and was feeling rather boisterous. I explained to him that I am an actor in Chicago, doing a theatrical production where I play a middle-eastern character. He is also an actor, but found it hard to believe that I could be cast as a middle-eastern person based on how “white” he thought I looked. He was drunk, I was sober, and so I really didn’t want to get into it with him at the time. What I really felt like telling him was, “You have no idea WHAT a middle-eastern person looks like, because I look VERY Iranian.”

My Industry can’t get Latino right.

September 22, 2019September 22, 2019 actor, Desperate Housewives, get in your own way, Latino, Ricardo Chavira, San Antonio, television industry, TV, TX

Ricardo Chavira,
San Antonio, TX.

Actor who splits time between SA and LA. Alumnus of TV series Desperate Housewives. Id say I was shocked that industry can’t tap into Latino market, but I’m not. I also realize that we as Latinos have a tendency to get in our own way.

A costume mistaken for an actor

May 10, 2018May 10, 2018 @patarnold826, actor, constume, mistaken, Patricia Arnold, say what, twitter

Patricia Arnold
Submitted via Twitter: @patarnold826

I am grace, power and inextinguishable

April 27, 2018August 18, 2020 actor, artist, Brooklyn, civil rights, free, grace, inextinguishable, New York City, NY, Power, Ryan Brooke Taylor, The Brooklyn Museum, witness

Ryan Brooke Taylor,
New York City, NY.
Collected from: WITNESS: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties at The Brooklyn Museum

My experience as a black male artist is directly related to the sacrifices and gains made by those who participated, in any and every way in the civil rights movement. They have made me free.

I’m simply a Black male Actor carving out my life in America.

I believe that who I am as a person; my integrity, my ethics, my humanity, these aspects of self are reflected in Everything I do.

Right now I have the honor of being in a wonderful production of Tracey Letts’s “Superior Donuts”. A play about race, class, and the american dream as played out in the gentrifying neighborhood of north- side Chicago.

To me, living a conscious life today is a revolutionary act. My existence as a Black, Gay, working Artist is in itself a Politic. It’s seems to me that the important questions are: What kind of neighbor am I? What hind of partner am I? What kind of citizen am I? What kind of artist am I? What kind of human being am I?

And the answers lie not in what I think and even less in what I say, but in what I do.

I am not the exchange student.

April 3, 2018April 3, 2018 actor, Brooklyn, humor, Mellini Kantayya, NY, Race, writer

Mellini Kantayya,
Brooklyn, NY.

I am an actor and writer who currently has a book out (humor essays) about the entertainment industry. I include a chapter about race, and there are many many six word race cards I could have created. But being mistaken for the exchange student and many other like encounters are what made me develop a sense of humor—too see the funny side… which is how I make my living today. Though, I still wish there was a way I could go back in time to tell my teen self.

The “N” word hurts all of us

July 15, 2013 actor, hurts, Jay McCord, Maya Angelou, N word, VA, Video, Virginia Beach

Jay McCord
Virginia Beach, VA

I have worked as an actor and music video producer for over a decade and I am always uncomfortable when someone uses the N word in any context regardless of the originator. To me it continually ties our generation to the horrors of the countries past. Like Maya Angelou said “that word is poison.”

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