In the 2006-07 television season, it seemed the broadcast networks had gotten the message about the importance of diversity. Prime-time television offered programs such as Lost, Heroes, Ugly Betty, and Grey's Anatomy featuring multiethnic casts and strong story lines that attracted diverse audiences and earned top ratings in the sought-after 18-to-49-year-old demographic.
Yet when the networks announced their 2007-08 prime-time lineups at last month's upfronts in New York, groups that advocate the inclusion of ethnic and cultural minorities felt that message had come back marked "return to sender." Of the 29 new series picked up by the networks, according to a June 6 Los Angeles Times article, only five feature performers of color in central roles: Fox's K-Ville, CBS's Cane, and Eight Days a Week, Life Is Wild, and Aliens in America on the CW, a network known for its multicultural programming. Nearly all of the 29 programs will feature minority characters, but those characters will be in support of white characters in the lead roles. ABC canceled three of its multicultural shows -- George Lopez, Day Break, and Six Degrees -- but isn't adding any new series that would star minorities in lead roles this fall season. The network's Grey's Anatomy spinoff, Private Practice, was excluded as the show is built around a white main character. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lopez apparently deemed his show's cancellation a race issue. "TV just became really, really white again," the actor-comedian said.
The upfronts came on the heels of the Writers Guild of America West's report that the prospects for minority screenwriters are just as pale. Although about 30 percent of the American population is nonwhite (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), the WGA study notes that minorities make up less than 10 percent of employed TV writers and are paid significantly less.
Those figures are no surprise to Sharon Jensen, executive director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, an organization that advocates for underrepresented groups. "You see the work that's yet to be done," Jensen said. "What it tells you is that we can't take [diversity] for granted, and these practices are not embedded in our culture enough to become routine."
According to the Screen Actors Guild's most recent Casting Data Report, there were 40,826 combined total roles for actors on TV and in film in 2004. The only minority group whose representation on TV and in film was in line with the latest U.S. census data (for 2005) was African Americans: SAG found 13.8 percent of roles cast in '04 went to African Americans -- comparable to the 13 percent of the U.S. population the group makes up, according to the Census Bureau. The largest minority, constituting 14 percent of the population, Latinos/Hispanics were cast in only 5.5 percent of TV and film roles. Asians/Pacific Islanders, who account for 5 percent of the population, represented only 2.9 percent of performers cast; Native American actors were seen in a paltry 0.2 percent of all roles, despite Native Americans representing about 2 percent of the U.S. population. SAG's 2005-06 Casting Data Report is due out in late summer.
"Why, as an American community, as an American family, do we not see a broader array of people of color in these character positions? I think it's extremely disheartening," said Stefanie L. Brown, national director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Youth & College Division. "There are so many stereotypes that pigeonhole people of color in certain characters and certain roles, when we have a depth of emotions and characters that we can play that need to be represented."
Tokens or Real Characters?
Diversity may appear to be down, but it's definitely not out. According to Angel Rivera, national director of affirmative action and diversity for SAG, there are still plenty of opportunities for inclusion. "In the last three years, we've seen the highest percentage of minority representation in TV and film, according to our Casting Data Report. This year is not over. There will be a number of guest stars and support roles that will come through those projects in the fall season, and we judge it at the end of the year, not necessarily how it begins," Rivera said. "We hope to see that there will be a continuing increase in minority representation."
However, diversity is about more than putting black, brown, or yellow faces on prime-time TV, according to actor Felipe Alejandro, first vice president of Nosotros, a group dedicated to improving the image of Hispanics and Latinos in the entertainment industry: "You don't want to call it tokenism, but sometimes it's window dressing. Yeah, you did put a brown face or an Asian face here and there. But the real test is: Are you fleshing it out? Is this a real character that's substantial, or just a stereotype that's going to fit the purpose for that particular piece?"
Jeff Mio, vice president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, emphasized that although race, ethnicity, and culture are important, those attributes don't have to be a character's entire identity. Mio offered Indian-American writer-actor Mindy Kaling, of NBC's The Office, as an example of inclusion without tokenism. "[Kaling] writes her character on the program as kind of a Valley-girl character. She has said on talk shows that the fact that she is Asian might appear sixth or seventh on your list of trying to describe her character. This is an example of how a diverse writing staff can write for Asian characters in an entirely different manner and still have the show be successful," Mio explained.
Of the seven advocacy groups Back Stage spoke with, each listed stereotypes as multicultural programming's enemy No. 1. According to Judy Bell, director of the Native American Film Commission, the entertainment industry still has a problem with identifying minority characters as real people. "Writers have to start thinking of Native Americans as not just the image of long braids and very traditional-looking," she said. "Why can't someone be cast as the pharmacist? Why isn't someone the lawyer? I think that's going to open doors for the Native actors to be recognized, not just hovering in the background waiting for another chance to ride bareback in a historical depiction that's not even truthful."
But according to Damon Romine, entertainment media director for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, there has been a lot of progress toward the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters, particularly on Disney-owned ABC. "ABC has raised the bar for inclusive storytelling and sets an example for other networks to follow," he said. "We've seen some tremendous advances in the past season when it comes to the quality of LGBT depictions. Ugly Betty is the first TV comedy to feature a transgender character, and this is [a] series where the Latino family is accepting of a 12-year-old boy who is likely gay, which sends an incredibly important message. Brothers & Sisters is historic for network TV for giving its gay male character a romantic love life just like all the other characters. And, it should be noted, with the character of Saul, Brothers & Sisters is telling a story rarely seen in the media: that of a gay person over the age of 60."
This season advocacy groups are hoping the entertainment industry will be more open to creating diverse characters and story lines with diverse themes. But, Jensen emphasizes, advocacy groups are meant to inform the industry, not police it. "Nobody is here to legislate," Jensen said. "All we want to do is expose writers across the board of the possibilities of the humanity that's out there. Then it's their creative decision about who they write about and what they write about. Nobody can legislate that."