October 29th, 2012 | Posted by Miss Jia | Posted In Open Discussion

The internet has been in a serious uproar ever since it was announced that Afro-Latina actress, Zoe Saldana, would play the legendary Nina Simone in an upcoming biopic.

I’ve seen a TON of tweets complaining about the creation of this movie, and even a few blog posts condemning the actress’ portrayl.

More recently, Kimberly Foster of For Harriet penned an open letter to Zoe condemning her lack of awareness.

Few dark-skinned actresses in Hollywood could open a film. That’s not your fault. However, in the future, I would caution you from making statements like, “..why the f— would I sit down and talk about how hard it is for Black women in Hollywood when there’s a Black president in my country?” Because even in the United States where Barack Obama is the president, dark skin, kinky hair and African features are still loathed.

Check out the FULL letter HERE.

Additionally, check out Atlanta Sistah’s views on the matter below. Quite the opposite, eh?

My thoughts: I’m not the big Zoe fan that some of you guys are. So I can’t cosign on how great her acting is without sounding misinformed (I’ve seriously only paid attention to her in Drumline and even then, Nick Cannon’s dry lips were a bigger distraction). However, I will say that Hollywood is doing nothing new here. Yes, I wish they could’ve gotten an actress that resembles Simone a bit more…an unknown actress would’ve been my #1 choice. But Hollywood has been telling us for years that being brown or dark isn’t good enough. All of this is disappointing, yes, but it’s not really a surprise.

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