It’s been a few weeks since Lin Manuel Miranda’s movie adapted musical “In the Heights” has come out after a long wait.

This story follows the dreams of the main character Usnavi and fellow Washington Heights residents. This New York neighborhood is filled with music and several Latino, mainly Dominican, cultures. The Broadway production opened in 2008 and was nominated for several rewards.

Many people were excited for the release of the film adaption of the production, as it would be a great opportunity for representation of Latino people in film. Despite the love that has been shown for the film a lot of well-deserved criticism has followed. A lot of fans, particularly Afro Latinos, were disappointed to see the lack of racial diversity among the Latino cast.

Washington Heights is a very diverse neighborhood in real life and is filled with all types of Latinos, including Afro Latinos. In fact, the majority of Dominicans are of African descent, and many Latinos who live in Washington Heights are Black people.

The type of representation that was displayed in the film brought up a conversation about colorism in Hollywood that has been going on for a long time. When Hollywood chooses to have more diverse characters, more often than not they choose those that are lighter skinned, mixed race, or racially ambiguous.

Felice Leon, a video producer for The Root, asked In the Heights director, Jon M Chu, in an interview about the lack of darker skinned and Black Latinos. Leon stated, “As a Black woman of Cuban descent specifically from New York City, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the fact that most of your principal actors were light-skinned or white-passing Latinx people.”

Chu responded by saying that he needed to be more educated on the topic but that they tried to get the best people for those roles.

I think it’s very easy for people to be dismissive of how much colorism affects what we see in all types of media, but we’re getting to a stage where more people are willing to call out directors, producers, and actors for playing into Hollywood’s tendency to erase darker skinned and black people from being represented properly on the screen.

The film was still a beautiful musical that showed aspects of Latino culture that is rarely seen on film, but this conversation about its shortcomings is necessary.

Destiny Blanchard is a junior management major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or dblanchard@eiu.edu.