I worked in Hollywood for a veteran indie movie producer for 7 yrs (I'm now retired). I'm also Asian-American. I can tell you it got tiring seeing lead casting lists with the same 25 or so white actors ad nauseum, with any suggestions of a non-white actor shot down immediately. It's hard enough for a struggling white actor to break into this elite group, so you can imagine how even more difficult or impossible it is for a non-white actor. Bruce Lee struggled to break through beyond stereotypes--even after Enter the Dragon. Does that mean every casting decision needs a non-white actor? No. There are period dramas where it would be historically inaccurate to cast, say, an Asian actor as an English aristocrat. But there are plenty of stories where race doesn't fundamentally determine the core of a character. Example: Into the Badlands on AMC. And there are plenty of historical stories where minorities have just been background or servants, and now can be brought to the fore. Example: Warrior on Cinemax, about 19th-cen SF Chinatown around the time of The Chinese Exclusion Act. Bruce Lee developed the idea into a treatment, then pitched it to the networks in the 70's, only to have them reject the idea and then turn around and poach it into Kung Fu, starring a white actor, David Carradine. And needless to say, there are still plenty of movies that are perfectly fine with white leading actors.
But mostly this casting wall hasn't been, at least in the last 30 yrs or so, necessarily because of racial animus per se--though outright racism was definitely there in the 20's through the 70's. Racism still exists to some extent, just not overtly. The wall has existed because a very short list of white actors who drive box office (with Will Smith and Denzel Washington having been the exceptions) determine whether a producer can get financing and distribution. It's perceived financial risk in the producer's eyes. It's been a chicken-and-egg problem.
On the one hand, there's the insistence that there aren't minority actors who would drive box office and thus help a producer obtain financing and distribution. Who would a producer cast? They're not there.
(Note: In the indie film world financing relies on obtaining distribution--the two are entwined. Financing is mostly packaged by pre-selling int'l distribution licensing rights to use as collateral, along with tax breaks, to obtain bank or private-equity financing. So buyers of licensing rights--distributors--determine casting as much as producers, since they're key to financing a movie. And distributors always predicate their willingness to buy on casting they think will drive box office. You wouldn't believe how many times I heard even Asian distributors insist on the predictable white casting. The major US studio/distribution world--the Disneys and Paramount etc.--face similar pressures even if their financing structures are different. And in any case, most studios are only financing tentpole content they own themselves, like Marvel properties, or slates they might acquire from producers who act as work-for-hires under production-finance-distribution deals. The rest they license from producers, which means the indie-financing pressues I describe above come full circle.)
And on the other hand, producers and distributors are unwilling to take a risk developing and marketing a non-white leading actor who might break out and become a star (in the manner of Harrison Ford and Star Wars). So there are no non-white actors who drive box office because producers and distributors haven't even taken risks in grooming or developing them. (As noted above, Will Smith and Denzel Washington have been the exceptions.) They don't know. Chicken and egg.
Now, tv/cable and streaming have changed the game because their revenue models are based on advertising and subscriptions, not box office, which gives them more immunity to the trials of non-traditional casting. They don't have to rely on the whims of distributors ensuring financing. They have more time to test out casting and stories. Which is why you see most of the progress coming from TV/cable and streaming. And most of the creative energy has been brewing there anyway, dating back to HBO and The Sopranos. But that should be changing in movies with the financial success of Crazy Rich Asians. (Warner Bros only distributed, not financed Crazy. A Chinese private-equity fund, China Cultural and Entertainment Fund (CCEF) financed it by buying a stake in the production company, SK Global.) Money talks. Hollywood will always follow profit even if they aren't the first to take risks. I have never worked in a more capitalistic world than in Hollywood--and I worked in technology before Hollywood.
