USC to remove John Wayne exhibit over late actor's racist Playboy comments 'endorsing White supremacy'
University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts announced that it will remove its John Wayne exhibit after students and alumni started protesting last fall that "by keeping Wayne’s legacy alive, SCA is endorsing White supremacy". The protests raged after the actor made some racist comments in a 1971 Playboy magazine interview. "Conversations about systemic racism in our cultural institutions along with the recent global, civil uprising by the Black Lives Matter Movement require that we consider the role our School can play as a change-maker in promoting antiracist cultural values and experiences. Therefore, it has been decided that the Wayne Exhibit will be removed," USC Cinematic Arts announced in a statement on Twitter. They added that to "allow scholarship to continue on the role John Wayne's films played in the history of cinema", materials from the exhibit, which was created in 2012, will be moved to the school’s Cinematic Arts Library. The current response of the institute is in contradiction with the USC's initial reaction to the protests last year in December. Instead of removing the exhibit, school officials created a space to expand on indigenous filmmaking, feminism and critical race theory.
The protests started after Wayne's comments against Black people, Native Americans and the LGBTQ community in Playboy interview resurfaced. "I believe in White supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people," Wayne said in the interview. "I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves," he added.
This comes after the report that people were calling for Wayne's name and statue to be removed from an Orange County airport in California. The actor's family has defended the screen icon, dismissing claims of him being racist calling it a "single outlier interview from half a century ago" that does not represent him. The actor's son, Ethan Wayne, released a statement defending his late father, saying the word racist is "casually tossed around these days, but I take it very seriously. I also understand how we got to this point". Ethan insisted that his father "was not a racist". "There is no question the words spoken by John Wayne in an interview 50 years ago have caused pain and anger. They pained him as well, as he realized his true feelings were wrongly conveyed," Ethan said. "The truth is, as we have seen in papers from his archives, he did not support 'White supremacy' in any way and believes that responsible people should gain power without the use of violence."
Ethan's statement also added that his father hired and worked with people of all "races, creeds and sexual orientations". He continued: "John Wayne stood for the very best of all of us — a society that doesn't discriminate against anyone seeking the American dream." He added that the "current focus on social justice is absolutely valid and necessary. But attempts by some to use it for political advantage distract from real opportunities for reform". He said, Wayne "would be in the forefront demanding fairness and justice for all people. He would have pulled those officers off of George Floyd, because that was the right thing to do. He would stand for everyone's right to protest and work toward change".