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1. Article: what about us middle-class white men on TV?! « Uppity Brown Woman on 04 Sep 2008 at 3:41 pm

   [...] uk, uk television, white privilege I always laugh whenever I read these types of claims. Via Racialicious, at the Daily Mail: Speaking on a filmed interview, which was aired at the Edinburgh Television [...]

Comments

1. Big Man wrote:

   So does that mean that all those years that white men ran the BBC that they were discriminating against everybody else? I wonder if that cat complained then?

   It’s amazing how often racists make really, really stupid arguments. They clearly lack the ability to think an argument through.

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 1:43 pm ¶

2. DEAF FEMINIST PUNK!! wrote:

   Funny how “youth channels” such as Disney, N and MTV are more racially and ethnically diverse than mainstream channels like ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX.

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 3:38 pm ¶

3. John Jihoon Chang wrote:

   Working for Disney, I can also tell you that the production staff (behind the scenes) for the production companies hired is fairly diverse too.

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 4:00 pm ¶

4. macon d wrote:

   That BBC twit’s thoughts don’t surprise me at all–only that he verbalized them. Folks in the majority (white, male, hetero, etc.) almost always overestimate the number of various sorts of minorities around them. It’s a sign that they’re feeling besieged, and more than that, that their power is under threat.

   I especially like Ms. Frostup’s (?!) response: ‘He names about five women because he couldn’t possibly name all the men in positions of power in TV because he would have been there all bloody day.’

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 4:24 pm ¶

5. Black Canseco wrote:

   “Funny how “youth channels” such as Disney, N and MTV are more racially and ethnically diverse than mainstream channels like ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX.”

   What’s interesting is how no matter how diverse the casts most shows still promote some of the dumbest and most offensive stereotypes about people of color–both male and female.

   Or they do the Grey’s Anatomy thing which for all the diversity, they’re basicallly white people in ethnic skins. There’s nothing culturally diverse about that show or most characters on most TV beyond the occasional cheap race-related joke.

   we’ve progressed, but not all that uch if you’re honest.

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 5:02 pm ¶

6. kakodaimon wrote:

   With regards to Grey’s, I don’t watch the show, but I do know that the characters were created without any information about gender or race – the actor who had the most interesting take in their audition got the role. That I suspect is why ethnicity is not a building block of how most characters are presented. Now again, I haven’t seen more than an episode or two and don’t care to see more, but while I wouldn’t like all TV to use this model of diversity, it’s actually pretty refreshing to have at least one show where the main attribute of a character of colour isn’t “being a character of colour.” Of course, that’s not enough…

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 6:59 pm ¶

7. Jeff wrote:

   I watched “Lost” and still watch “‘Desperate Housewives” and I wouldn’t brag about the “diversity”. On “Lost”, the black characters have been minimalized (Rose), shuffled off (Harold) or killed (Mr Ecks). To the best of my knowledge, there are two Koreans and a man of Middle Eastern descent. That’s it.

   “‘Desperate Housewives” is worse. The one black family was put in a ridiculous story-line and sent away after one season. I can’t think of any non-white characters on that show.

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 8:10 pm ¶

8. Black Canseco wrote:

   “but I do know that the characters were created without any information about gender or race – the actor who had the most interesting take in their audition got the role. That I suspect is why ethnicity is not a building block of how most characters are presented.”

   That “happens to be ethnic” approach seldom makes for great entertainment or quality relationships in real life.

   When people/characters have to treat their ethnicity as some sort of random occurence or accidental happening or worse–a condition to apologize for, then you have yet another obstacle in our goal for equality.

   Pretending you don’t see “it” just makes more elephants in the room. which is why i don’t find Grey’s anatomy all that compelling. It’s as if the characters are so myopic as to pretend to not even discuss race in any way shape or form. It’s like Stepford Ethnicity.

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 8:31 pm ¶

9. Whitney wrote:

   @Jeff: As far as I know, Harold Perrineu wanted off the show. Same with Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Mr Eko).

   Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 9:58 pm ¶

10. Lisa J wrote:

    Jeremey Paxman is an idiot. They show his program(me) News Night on BBC America and when they showed the ads for it, it looked compelling and interesting and they played up how he “asks the tough questions” and showed clips of him asking Rummy if he was incompetent and asking Blair if he and Bush prayed together (making the point they were too close). So I decided to watch; what trash! He interviewed Kofi Annan and asked him 3 times, why should the west feel obligated at all for the problems in Africa. It was annoying and the man answered his question very graciously and essentially agreed with some caveats (which made me uneasy and dissapointed but I get why he said what he said) but Paxman kept asking. So he is either very thick (or to quote Doctor Who, he is “Mr. Thickety-Thick-Thick-Thick from Thicksylvania and so’s your Dad”) or really wanted to make his point. Either way, I realized that was not the show for me, and haven’t tuned in since.

    The multi-ethnic networks piece was troubling because it seemed that there was way too much calling blacks paranoid, or manipulative on the race issue, and I didn’t feel like one of the author’s cited, Dr. Jackson, either didn’t have his views adequately represented or they really didn’t come down hard on which side he was on.

    On the diversity piece, one thing they left out was that Sci-Fi shows, especially the original programming on the Sci-Fi channel, tend to do a good job on diversity. I actually didn’t notice myself initially and then one day when my Mom was out my house she said “Hmm, there sure are a lot of black folks on the Sci-Fi channel “(she hates the stuff) I never thought of it before that but she was right, and you do see a decent number of other minorities, though not many people of Hispanic/Latino descent and usually (not always) the characters aren’t stereotypes which is always refreshing. Not so much with the god-awful movies they show on Saturday’s.

    Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 11:43 am ¶

11. thesciencegirl wrote:

    I just got my October Glamour in the mail, and I came across an article title, “Do you have friends of other races?” and one of the panelists is Carmen! I haven’t even read it yet; I was just so excited to see her name. I was just flipping through the issue, thinking about how many white faces there were in the ads and articles, so this was an unexpected delight.

    Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 8:46 pm ¶