‘Captain American: Winter Soldier’ came out in the month of April, which featured Marvel’s first African American super hero ever to be seen in the Marvel universe.

A lot of movie watchers have been exited with the edition of ‘The Falcon,’ portrayed by the African-American actor Anthony Mackie, considering the lack of diversity within the film industry. For a while now, people of different race have yet to get the same opportunities as to those who are Caucasian.

Here at American International College, students and faculty share their opinion on the topic of diversity within the film industry.

Yaribeth Ruiz, a junior at AIC, shared her thoughts on whether or not minorities have equal opportunities as a Caucasians in the film industry.

“I think we’re almost equal, we’re almost the same on the playing field,” she said. “Everybody wants diversity in their movies. I feel like diversity definitely adds an edge to movies and it just literally makes you feel you’re getting to know them on a personal level.”

Marty Langford, a professor at AIC in the Communications Department, had a different opinion.

“No, absolutely not,” he said.

“Minorities in the movie studios usually demand that one individual to kind of break down those barriers initially. With the African-American representation in the film industry, you have somebody like Spike Lee who owns his projects to the point where he demands certain power in terms of in Final Cut or relationship with the studio,” he said.

Langford added, “And it isn’t until often times a single minority film maker comes out that seems to kind of open the door for others. Until there’s equal representation in the studio system in terms of decision makers and powers to be, that can green light, I think minority film makers are really kind of pushed into the independent world in order to make their voices heard. You see some of it in film festivals, and you see a lot of international film makers from different ethnicities creating film. But they rarely seem to kind of break that Hollywood thresh hold, they’re so often just on the periphery of the film industry.”

There are many thoughts and discussions amongst people on whether or not Hollywood is prejudice.

Ruiz said she sees important changings in the industry.

“I feel like at one point yeah, I feel that in the past few years,” she said. “But now I feel like they’re definitely breaking through that barrier. I’m mean Lupita won an academy award and she’s African-American. She did such an amazing role model, and I feel like so far the movies that are coming out now are like absolutely amazing. Not only are they breaking nationality barriers but they’re breaking down barriers of different sexually just like Jared Leto doing the role from the film ‘Dallas Buyers Club.’ It’s amazing, they’re breaking down barriers. Right now I feel like it’s definitely exceeding in that level. But back in the day, there was a lot of prejudice between roles in actresses and stuff like that, but I don’t see that now.”

Langford added more to the discussion.

“I’m not sure if it’s a prejudice, I think it’s just the lack of cultural awareness and a lack of cultural understanding, When they see Tyler Perry movies which can sometimes veer into that show type of approach, and they see them making a lot of money and they see romantic comedies that have an African American lilt, their mindset doesn’t become ‘Oh we should give minorities more representation of the film, instead we should make more romantic comedies that have black people in it. Or we should make more action movies that has Samuel L. Jackson in it.’ And they tend to identify or use a very small segment of the minority population in the industry to kind of fulfill those needs,” he said.

Many hope that the film industry becomes more aware of the different cultures and talents of many other races. People love to see diversity in films. It’s about time that Hollywood started paying more attention.