Playing a losing race card

There is, however, the small matter of history and dramatic storytelling. Putting aside the fact that there were no "soldiers" on Iwo Jima, only Marines, let's stipulate for the record that it might be hard to work too many African Americans into a story about the Japanese Imperial Army, which is what "Letters from Iwo Jima" was.

As far as "Flags of Our Fathers" goes, 900 of the 19,168 black Americans who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II were among the 250,000 Americans who ultimately went ashore there. All were in rigidly segregated units. Only the black Marines of the 8th Ammunition Company came ashore during the second and third waves, which would have put them on the island in time for the flag-raising that was the subject of the film.

Moreover, the fact of the matter is that looking back over Eastwood's directorial career -- including his Oscar-winning films "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby" -- there's probably no filmmaker of similar stature in Hollywood history who has so unself-consciously created central roles for actors who just happened to be African American.

Both the outbursts we heard this week belong to the era of identity politics and culture that is now thankfully fading. From the start, the insistence that race and ethnicity were central to American identity constituted an intellectual swamp that ultimately had to drain into a moral sewer. That's why its outflow -- like the remarks Nunez and Lee made this week -- now strike us as bilge.

--

timothy.rutten@latimes.com