In Bird Box, the hero is a "white woman" though. White women are virtually never cast as having any weaknesses or faults on TV. In fact, they are often portrayed as "the one who receives the prize," the prize being the alpha black man. This occurs so much in US commercials as of late. Weak/ugly/dumb white man makes a fool of himself, while strong/handsome/smart black man shows how great and intelligent he is, often while a white woman observes the obvious difference, often with an impressed, intrigued and/or seduced expression on her face.
The issue is not that it simply occurs. It's the frequency at which it occurs, and the fact that it is never the other way around.
Every man of color in Bird Box is just so very good, and so very moral, that even when infected, they manage to either sacrifice themselves to save others, or quite literally "kill all the bad whites" before sacrificing themselves. Conversely, every white man (and some white women, but not all white women) are bad people who turn into psychotic murderers when infected. Even when they are right and are the voice of reason (Malkovich), they are still not to be trusted or befriended.
Whites make up over 70% of the population of the US, so you can't use, "But we see white heroes so often in films!" as any kind of valid complaint, because we also see plenty of white villains in those same films. And besides, I reiterate again: The existence of noble, heroic, athletic black men on its own, is not the issue. The issue is when they consistently insert a weak, cowardly, ugly, nerdy, racist (etc etc) white man to paint an obvious contrast of one being good and the other being bad.
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