In the 2017 film Game Day, directed by John Susman and co-produced by Stuart Wolf, a white woman named Ricki (Elizabeth Alderfer) navigates a predominantly Black neighborhood, forming a bond with Lucas, a street-smart Black youth. On the surface, the film appears to champion diversity: a Black boy is prominently featured alongside a white girl, even gracing the cover as her close friend. The producers might argue, “Look, we’re not racist. These are just the realities. If we were racist, would we have cast Lucas so centrally?” Yet, beneath this veneer of inclusion lies a sinister strategy—one that perpetuates racism by embedding KKK and Nazi-like tropes within a narrative cloaked as progressive storytelling.

The film starts promisingly, with Ricki’s socioeconomic decline leading her to a “bad” neighborhood, setting up a dynamic reminiscent of Save the Last Dance (2001), a film that, despite its own flaws, embraced an “interracial” romance between a white girl and a Black boy with relative boldness for its time. Game Day teases a similar arc, as Ricki and Lucas connect through basketball, their parallel journeys highlighting the theme of individualism versus teamwork. But as the story unfolds, the facade crumbles. Lucas and his community are reduced to stereotypes: angry Black men, drug dealers, and basketball players, all under the watchful eye of a racially biased police force. These portrayals align with white supremacist narratives historically used by groups like the KKK to depict Blackness as inherently criminal and inferior. By the film’s end, Ricki is paired with Mark, a white IT guy, rather than Lucas, a choice that subtly endorses racial purity—a core tenet of KKK ideology.

This bait-and-switch is a classic example of tokenism, a strategy where marginalized characters are included to signal diversity while reinforcing racial hierarchies. Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, in Racism Without Racists (2022), calls this “token inclusion,” noting how visible diversity—such as placing a Black character on the cover—serves to mask the maintenance of white dominance. Jessie Daniels, in Cyber Racism (2009), examines how media perpetuates racial stereotypes, often justifying them as “realism,” a tactic Game Day employs by using Lucas’s presence to deflect accusations of racism while embedding regressive tropes. A 2017 study by Travis L. Dixon in the Journal of Communication terms this “racialized fear,” noting how media portrayals of Black criminality reinforce narratives historically leveraged by white supremacist groups to justify segregation.

Film studies further illuminate this strategy. Richard Dyer, in White (1997), argues that such portrayals position whiteness as the default, with Black characters serving as props to validate white narratives. In Game Day, Ricki’s growth is centered, while Lucas’s community is reduced to a backdrop of violence and poverty, reinforcing racial norms. A 2020 report from the USC Annenberg Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative highlights how films often exploit “diversity optics” to appear progressive while embedding regressive tropes. Game Day’s producers likely intended to pair Ricki with a white romantic lead from the outset, as a 2017 USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report notes that 70% of films that year avoided “interracial” leads due to perceived market risks. This premeditated choice mirrors the performative diversity seen in a 2004 Boston Legal episode, where producers of a musical auditioned a Black girl for the role of Annie to “pass themselves off as equal-opportunity employers,” while always intending to cast a white girl.

The film’s depiction of systemic issues, like police bias, further complicates its messaging. A 2020 report by Jewish Voice for Peace, Deadly Exchange, documents U.S. police training with Israeli forces, contributing to racial bias, which lends some grounding to Game Day’s portrayal. However, the film frames this bias to normalize white authority over Black spaces, echoing Nazi propaganda of racial hierarchy. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, in Hate in the Homeland (2020), details how modern media can covertly promote white supremacist ideals by embedding such narratives in seemingly neutral stories. Stripped of its diversity cloak, Game Day becomes an underhanded vehicle for these beliefs, normalizing racial stereotypes while pretending to challenge them.

Elizabeth Alderfer’s role as Ricki adds another layer to the critique. Like the white girl cast as Annie in Boston Legal, Alderfer didn’t write the script or control casting decisions; she was a beneficiary of systemic biases, not their architect. A 2017 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report notes that actors, especially early in their careers, often face pressure to take roles in flawed projects, as Alderfer did post her 2017 TV breakthrough. Yet her participation, alongside Susman and Wolf’s direction, contributes to a narrative that smacks of “white savior” self-glorification, a trope critiqued by scholar Robin DiAngelo in White Fragility (2018) for perpetuating white dominance under the guise of allyship. Nancy Wang Yuen, in Reel Inequality (2016), further notes how tokenism in Hollywood often places actors of color in stereotypical roles while centering white narratives, a pattern Game Day follows with Lucas.

Game Day’s Trojan horse strategy—using token diversity to smuggle in racist tropes—reveals a broader issue in Hollywood: the persistence of performative inclusion. By 2017, the cultural landscape had evolved since Save the Last Dance, with audiences more receptive to “interracial” narratives, as evidenced by the earlier film’s $131 million global gross. Yet Game Day regresses, its producers hiding behind “realism” to justify stereotypes while evading accountability. This underhanded promotion of racist beliefs, cloaked in a facade of neutrality, underscores the need for genuine representation in storytelling—representation that doesn’t just feature diversity, but centers it authentically, without fear of challenging systemic biases.

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Reference List

• Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. 6th ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.
• Daniels, Jessie. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights. Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
• DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press, 2018.
• Dixon, Travis L. “Good Guys and Bad Guys: How News Media Frame Black Male Criminality.” Journal of Communication, vol. 67, no. 5, 2017, pp. 752–773.
• Dyer, Richard. White: Essays on Race and Culture. Routledge, 1997.
• Jewish Voice for Peace. Deadly Exchange: The Dangerous Consequences of American Law Enforcement Trainings in Israel. 2020.
• Miller-Idriss, Cynthia. Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right. Princeton University Press, 2020.
• UCLA College of Social Sciences. 2017 Hollywood Diversity Report: Setting the Record Straight. 2017.
• USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Inequality in 900 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBT & Disability from 2007 to 2016. 2017.
• USC Annenberg Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative. Inequality in 1,200 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBTQ & Disability from 2007 to 2019. 2020.
• Yuen, Nancy Wang. Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism. Rutgers University Press, 2016.