By Heather L. Lawton
They wait till black entertainers take a fall in Hollywood. Halle Berry, the first Black actress to win a Best Actress Oscar, officially became “Hollywood Royalty,” but was never treated as such, still having to fight for decent scripts and respect. They could have offered Berry their assistance. They have the kind of power to gaslight the public into believing that mediocre actors with no Oscar wins, nominations, or box office hits are “Royalty.” Black people have to bust their asses to be anointed by them (not that it’s paramount; we’re discussing principle). There are two in particular whom we need to hold in our gaze.
The media has a peculiar way of allocating their praise. On November 3, Yahoo! and The Telegraph called Halle Berry “Hollywood Royalty,” for the first time, and their framing seems inappropriate. It appears they have chosen to explicitly elevate her status in their publications to shade the fuck out of her; they’re using her possible missteps with her son, a young man who is, perhaps, testing his physical strength with his mother as he becomes a man.
Why are these two sites crowning Berry “Hollywood Royalty” now when they had years to do so?
