Just over a week since the film hit the box office, The Hunger Games has been deemed a runaway success with huge opening weekend sales, raking in over $189 million in the U.S. alone. However, some of this success has been overshadowed as the film has also been the subject of a race row as fans of the Suzanne Collins novel on which the film is based tweeted their feelings about the character Rue being played by a young black actress.
In the book, Rue is described as being “a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes.” Somehow, even with this description many readers and “fans” of the book still jumped to the conclusion that Rue would be white; but what’s more disturbing is that many seemed to be disgusted that she was played by a black girl in the film.
Rue is played by the adorable Amandla Stenberg, a talented young actress who you can also see in the film Colombiana. She fits the description of character in the book perfectly, but for some reason readers envisioned the character to be white, or more specifically a “little blonde innocent girl.” Because, according to these so-called fans, only blondes are innocent.
A slew of racist remarks and ignorant comments circulated around Twitter while a quiet observer put together a Tumblr page exposing all of the racist comments made. Most of the people exposed on the site have now either shut down their Twitter account or made it private. Below are just a few of the ignorant statements.
That’s a shame. Not surprising.. #Trayvon. Sad part is (for them) that two of the disgusting monsters shown above are clearly not white. Es ok though. Regardless of THEIR ethnicities.. I won’t be sad when they die either. ; )