However, in the 1960s, destroying the status quo became the new cool, and Hollywood jumped to step and fetch it. This introduced the platitudes/consequences split that Kersey so expertly satires, in which:

We want to believe. We would like to have positive attitudes toward African-Americans integrating into society.

We symbolize. Instead of showing a literal integration, we decide to show strong symbols of African-American success.

We portray a false reality. As a result, in movies African-Americans act in a way that shows little resemblance to reality.

We form a crowd. Anyone who does not speak, act and portray this false reality is now viewed as an ideological enemy, even if they’re African-American.

True, there were plenty of exceptions to the rule — Dirty Harry’s legendary rash of beating up minorities in order to get to a white serial killer, or the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, or even the forced diversity in Star Wars — Lando Calrissian — turning out to be more of a traitor, pimp and two-faced double-dealer than positive role model. But for the most part, Hollywood has shown us the shiny happy people version of race relations: African-American presidents, hackers, doctors, lawyers, judges and superheroes.

Kersey mocks this trend with a method dear to my heart, because it combines both the left and right brains. From the geeky scientist side of the brain, he takes a love for facts and figures and citations; from his liberal arts major side, a love of the juxtaposition with ironic commentary. The blog posts (from SBPDL) that he reprints to make this book consistently show us a concrete example from a Hollywood film, then hit us with the statistical reality, then point out the logical inconsistency and show us how we are being manipulated.