More comments...

(Regarding "24"'s David Palmer, and what it's success implies)
OTOH, people are paying for the DVD box sets otherwise they would stop making them.

Also, another area of consideration is that I don't believe you can generalize box office data to reflect the population at large, though it is tempting to do so.

All products, movies included, have a marketing democraphic: who is the audience the movie is attempting to reach? Perhaps a statement can be made about that particular demographic and racism but the statement is quite possibly invalid outside of that demographic from a sociologic point of view.

I would also suggest that the demographic for the TV show "24" is very much different from that of Blade. And that may tell us something as well.
CoolBlue | Email | Homepage | 02.01.05
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EXCELLENT point on the DVD's!  Television has been a slightly different beast--with its own real problems: for instance, it took fifty years of television before there was a successful hour-long drama with a non-white lead (Deep Space Nine).  And no, don't bother mentioning "I Spy"--Robert Culp's name came first.
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Regarding demographics, I have absolutely no reason not to believe it is representative of the American public as a whole.  As a whole, the moviegoing audience is pretty similar to the average American--there is no huge mis-match I've ever heard of.  And in terms of targeting--it doesn't matter what the genre; western, comedy, drama, science fiction, musical, you can't have a non-white male having sex without it having a negative impact on boxoffice.  I think I certainly CAN suggest that, taken together, they represent America as a whole, and not some partial, racist demographic.  Human beings are tribal.  Tribe is most easily distinguished by visual appearance.  This influences life in countless ways, and negative ways if  you happen to be at the losing end of the percentage.
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Still don't believe me?  Go to the IMDB, and look up the 300 top box-office films of all time.  Sort by the race of the star.  The top films with white stars have sex in 'em about 65% of the time.  The top films with non-white stars have sex in them about 7% of the time.  Try to explain that without trying to suggest that "maybe the black stars don't WANT to have sex in their films."  I promise you, they long for the same range of emotional expression that Brad Pitt and George Clooney and whoever get in their films--but the public won't buy it, and over time Hollywood has been paper-trained to avoid the images that damage box-office.  I just dare you to explain it in terms of universal human behaviors, without trying to suggest that group "X" is somehow terribly different from group "Y."  Double dare ya.

Steve