Disclaimer: This piece is NOT written as an opportunity for people to praise me and my decision. In fact, if you feel inspired after reading this article, then perhaps you haven’t really grasped the concept I’m trying to convey. I am not trying to make people feel guilty or uncomfortable for watching the movies they want to watch; instead, I am trying to bring awareness to the kind of cinema we decide to consume. My goal is to shed light on this issue, so that people can make conscious choices about their impact on societal racism and oppression.

These past few months, American movie theaters were awash with a variety of popular and revered films. I had the opportunity to see many of them, but when I would politely decline to see a certain film that my friends swore they knew I’d love, I still stood by my decision. I didn’t always tell them why, to avoid making them feel bad for wanting to see a certain movie, but sometimes I decided to them why. I simply don’t want to contribute to the ongoing oppression and failed representation of non-white people in cinema.

(A white audience watching a 3D movie in theaters)

Several of the movies my friends invited me to included: The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Ant-Man, The Avenger: Age of Ultron, and Jurassic World. One thing I noticed about all these films, from their trailers, is that all of them seem to have an all-white cast. An argument some people use with me when I point this out is, “Oh, but in this movie, there IS a black character!” My response is always, “Is s/he the main character? Do they have a speaking part? Do they have a character arc? Are they the villain? Why did the director choose to make them a supporting character instead of the main character?”

(Geoffrey Holder, black actor playing Bond villain Baron Samedi)

Personally, I grew up in a white family in Virginia, so my childhood is filled with watching films dominated by white people. Yet, as I got older, I began to notice every time I watched a movie with only white people in it. The more I noticed it, the more it bothered me. As I started to do some research, the findings baffled me. Take the two animated hit family movies that both came out recently, Inside Out and Home. Although I have seen neither of these movies, I’ve heard from my friends and family that both were equally funny, imaginative, sweet, and worth watching. When I looked up both of them on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, I saw a different story. Inside Out, a movie about young white girl, got a rating of 8.6 and a metascore of 94/100 on IMDb, and a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Home, a story about a young black girl, got a rating of 6.7 and a metascore of 55/100 on IMDb, and a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes. Is this because Inside Out is just a better made movie than Home, or is it because Home has a main character who isn’t white?

I didn’t want to base my results on just these two movies, so I went to work on comparing movies that we considered similar in content, one with a white main character and one with a non-white main character, to see if online ratings were affected by the skin color of the character. Not surprisingly, it turns out that they are.

With hundreds of movies coming out this year, and the majority of them being with a cast of all white people, how can we say that people of color are not oppressed in cinema? The proof is undeniable. The number of non-white actors that have become household names in the past thirty years can be counted on my fingers alone. When we buy a ticket for a movie that doesn’t have a diverse cast, we hammer one more nail into the coffin of oppression.

(Scene from The Lone Ranger with two white actors playing the parts of vigilante John Reid and Native American warrior Tonto)

This isn’t to say that all directors who direct all-white movies are racist. My argument is that if there is a pool of qualified actors auditioning for the main character in a movie, a white male is more likely to get the part than a non-white person. To give an example, last week the writer of the new James Bond movie told fans that he thought the Golden Globe awarded black actor, Idris Elba, would be “too street” to play James Bond in the movie. That’s the kind of society we live in right now.

(Actor Idris Elba after receiving his Golden Globe award for Best Actor in BBC crime drama Luther)

Before you buy that ticket for Terminator Genisys or Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation, I want you to think about the impact your purchase is going to make on cinematic equality. It may seem small, but it adds up quick. If you spend $12 on a movie ticket every month for every year in your teenage and young adult life, that’s over $2,000 you spend on the all-white film industry by the time you’re 30. That doesn’t even include the money you spend on websites like Netflix watching movies and TV shows with all-white casts.

(The cast of popular series How I Met Your Mother)

Now, you may be wondering "how can I stop making this kind of oppressive impact on people of color?" I believe the first step is awareness, which is what this article is attempting to do. Hopefully, this has shed light on the kind of impact you’re subconsciously making. White people don’t always notice how many movies have all-white casts until they decide to pay attention to it. Since I've begun paying attention, I’ve made some serious changes in my film choices. This means I’m not going to see the new Maze Runner movie coming out soon or Hotel Transylvania. I’ve cut most superhero movies out of my life. This means no more Star Wars or Star Trek sequels. (To establish a point, some people argue that the new Star Trek movies are diverse because of the characters Sulu and Uhura. While it was progressive to have an Asian and African American character in a TV show when it came out in the 60s, that progress is not mirrored in the new movies. Sulu has barely any lines in the J. J. Abrams remake, and Uhura is over-sexualized as a woman by being put in a relationship with Spock that was never in the original show or movies.)

(Characters Spock and Uhura from J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness)

If not watching these much-awaited movies sounds drastic to you, please go back to the beginning of this article and reread.

(Main cast of Avengers: Age of Ultron)

The next step towards cinematic equality is to make an informed choice about the way you spend your money on cinema. I have to admit, it’s difficult to quit “cold turkey.” I ended up seeing Jurassic World when it came out in theaters last month. I’m not proud of my decision, but I know that eventually the cons of my decision will be outweighed by the result. Maybe we’ll get to see a movie about a Hispanic family that isn’t about them overcoming poverty and discourse. We may come across a black Spiderman movie, or even a movie with Asian characters actually played by Asian actors (I’m looking at you, Aloha.)

(Actor Emma Stone playing Chinese-and-Native-Hawaiian-written character Allison Ng)

Once we tip the scales so that we have movies coming out that actually represent and don’t discriminate against a chunk of our population, cinema will stop being an oppressive normality that caters only to white people and will start being equal entertainment that everyone can enjoy and appreciate.