"The white guy wants to preserve the black roots of jazz while the black guy is the sellout?"

"This could be a deliberate ironic twist, but if it is, it's a distasteful one for African-Americans. One legitimate complaint that marginalized people (women, people of color, Muslims, the LGBT community, etc.) have had about Hollywood in the past is that when they were portrayed, it was done in a negative way. The ditzy blonde, the Muslim terrorist, the gay predator are all familiar stereotypes from years of TV and movies. So much has been done in recent years to overcome those debasing images, but we still have to be careful. It's not that a black man can't be the sellout or the drug dealer, it's just that they shouldn't be if they're the only prominent black character in the story. Whether it's intentional or unintentional, that sends a bigoted message rippling through our society."

Writes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in "How 'La La Land' Misleads on Race, Romance and Jazz."

Part of the problem is that there are too few black characters in Hollywood movies (not counting the movies that are specifically about black culture and history). If there's only one black character, he's going to be perceived as representing more than an individual.

And to be more than an individual is to be less than an individual.

ADDED: At Vulture, "The Six Shadiest Lines From Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Analysis of La La Land."

"Kareem – Now I know why the press always treated you so badly — they couldn’t stand you."

"The fact is that you don’t have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again! Best wishes/Donald Trump."

"Instead of being content to punish Sterling and go back to sleep, we need to be inspired to vigilantly seek out, expose, and eliminate racism at its first signs."

Writes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and I'm just a little worried about what counts as "first signs." Sure, let's be vigilant, but part of vigilance is vigilance about ourselves, and "seek out, expose, and eliminate" sounds a tad mistake-prone and over-righteous.