Should they have walked off?

When I was a kid watching old movies with my parents, we'd see Chinese store signs written with slash-style calligraphy that was not Chinese, just bogus characters swinging on shingles in a movie set. Chinese dialogue was usually a series of frantic percussive sounds ("Wok tok dong!"), or hifalutin English without contractions ("Thank you, kind sir, my father will not be having tea").

It's not that a phrase like "Long Duck Dong" isn't funny, but that its staying power in our culture perpetuates foolish ideas. For decades Asian men were portrayed as Machiavellian evil-doers or over-eager buffoons until replaced by Millennial stereotypes like the bumbling hipster and malcontent sub-genius ("Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," or Bruce in "Get Smart").

Hollywood has usually strived for an appearance of assumed authenticity while seldom banking on its reality. Think about WWII movies where Nazis speak in bullying, guttural German while their Jewish victims talk in a Britishy sort of accent, even though both parties are probably German nationals. (And most Southerners know that a Hollywood Southern accent just stinks). Think about historical dramas and biopics where  two people were made into a single character, or pivotal moments were erased, all for the sake of advancing the plot. It's Hollywood. It's movies and TV. It's utter fantasy.

The problem is, some of us come to accept it as reality.

Our presumptions of correctness
When those Native American extras walked off Adam Sandler's latest movie set, for every American who supported the move, there was likely also one who thought, "Oh for Pete's sake, it's a comedy, lighten up and get over it. Now we've all got to watch what we say!"

But here's why it's a disservice to our country to just "get over it": TV shows and movies have a powerful influence on us, if only because we grant them more power than the books and articles we read (or don't read), the ideas we uphold, or the probing we don't do to learn about other cultures. Our kids watch too, and we may not express skepticism ("Remember it's just a movie") so we won't ruin the fun and fantasy. Movie catchphrases linger ("Make my day!") and movie "realities" often become the culturally entrenched single narrative we glom onto as "factual evidence" about how others groups and ethnicities exist in the world, never mind that they're only partial realities or flat-out errors.

And yes, we do have to watch what we say, because if we're going to confine our cross-cultural learning to sources like TV and movies, celebrity magazines, and anecdotal evidence versus firsthand experience, then there's a higher risk of offending a customer or even causing someone devastating injury (such as when suspicious Alabama police tackled that grandfather visiting from India, and put him into the hospital).

Thanks to 9/11, some of us continue to make erroneous judgments based in fear, not information, believing that most law-abiding Muslims are active jihadists while ignoring the "boondock jihadists" within our own heartland, in the form of neo-Nazi and white supremacy paramilitias.

To believe other cultures should just "get over it" is a denial of American values.

Should those native American extras have walked off? Absolutely. Comedy notwithstanding, by doing so they said, "My heritage means a lot more than what you're paying me each day to bear witness to this crap."

In my encounters with people of other cultures, I've learned there is always an exception to the single-narrative belief we might hold of that person's group or heritage. The best way to learn? Take that other person as an individual, and ask questions with care and civility. The payoff is that you might be taken as an individual as well, in a position to dispel any mistaken notions they might have of Americans.

"That woman"

Clara Harris Rathbone

This isn't marketing, but I do love a good backstory. 

The lives of three women were slowly but irrevocably being changed in the days leading up to Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865. 

Julia Grant, wife of Ulysses, had developed an active dislike for Mary Todd Lincoln through the years of the Civil War. Always a controversial and volatile personality, Mrs. Lincoln believed Mrs. Grant had shown her up one night when their husbands were discussing what should be done to Jefferson Davis if captured, and in a rather catty maneuver Mrs. Lincoln said, "Let Mrs. Grant answer this important question." The sarcasm was not lost on Mrs. Grant, who smoothly replied that any such decision should be left up to the wisdom and prudence of the President. Her witty response drew laughter and approval from the men, but Mary Todd Lincoln hated any woman who—real or perceived—played up to her husband. She snubbed Mrs. Grant whenever possible, to the point where Mrs. Grant said she would never again pass another evening with "that woman." No surprise, when the Grants were invited to join the Lincolns at Ford's Theater, they took a pass. (The breach was so acrimonious that Mrs. Lincoln snubbed Julia Grant's condolences even after the assassination).

Clara Harris (pictured) was a young socialite, daughter of judge and senator Ira Harris, who'd become friends with Mrs. Lincoln. As Washington celebrated the end of war, she stood by a window with the First Lady watching the fireworks, noting the President was resting on a sofa, exhausted but quietly elated that the war was finally ended. The Lincolns felt an affection for Clara and her fiance, Henry Rathbone. At the last minute Clara and Henry were invited to Ford's with the Lincolns, and she wore a special white satin dress for the occasion. (It would later be tied to many ghost stories about Lincoln's death). 

Mary Surratt ran a modest boarding house on H Street. Her son John was a Confederate spy and courier who became Booth's righthand man, and invited the conspirators to his mother's boarding house, later described by President Johnson as the "nest" that nurtured the assassins. It's unlikely Mrs. Surratt was committed to Lincoln's death; she'd been struggling to overcome debt ever since the death of her husband, and what living she could eke out from taking lodgers was still not enough.

On April 11, Lincoln delivered an impromptu speech from the White House and John Wilkes Booth stood in the crowd, seething with rage as he heard the President's words, especially when advocating voting rights for newly freed African Americans. "That's the last speech he'll ever make," Booth declared. From that point on, earlier plans to kidnap Lincoln turned to assassination, and when Booth went to collect his mail at Ford's the morning of April 14, he learned the President and First Lady would be attending the evening's performance.