Casting & Race, Part 2.5: A Representative Interlude
by Guest Contributor J Chang, originally published at Init_MovingPictures
While it’s still relatively new news, I thought I’d tackle this brief article from Variety republishing the Screen Actor’s Guild annual diversity research. While the headline of the article reads “SAG stats: Diversity lags” and the byline mentions that minorities, seniors and women are underrepresented, the racial breakdown in the article shows the following:
- 72.5% Caucasian
- 13.3% African American
- 6.4% Latino-Hispanic (?)
- 3.8% Asian-Pacific Islander
- 0.3% Native American
- 3.8% Other-Unknown
The article then goes on and adds data from the 2000 US Census, probably as a point of comparison:
- 73.4% Caucasian
- 11.5% African American
- 10.6% Latino-Hispanic
- 3.7% Asian-Pacific Islander
- 0.8% Native American
Now, if you simply compare those numbers, it only really seems like Latino/as are considerably underrepresented, if you’re broadly looking at the numbers (and assuming the US population breakdown hasn’t changed much in the last decade). Of course, the overall numbers actually fail to tell the whole picture, because there is no breakdown between the types of roles filled. As background comprises of a large number of actors, does this breakdown include background? How does the breakdown look when you examine supporting actors and leading actors? Recurring actors on television?TheTVAddict.com, upon discovering NBC’s new slogan of “More Colorful” was compelled to create this poster:
Now, to be fair, most NBC shows actually do feature one actor of color somewhere in the regular cast, but how many actors in mainstream film and television actually get top billing? How many actors of color are A-listers? Try counting the number of actors of color in The Hollywood Reporter’s list of bankable stars or James Ulmer’s A-list.
Of the actors in the breakdown, how many, by race, can earn a living from their actor’s wages? How many get steady work?
I have the strong suspicion that we’re going to find that the numbers align less with the census the higher we climb the casting tower.
While I appreciate the attempts from the industry to include more characters and actors of color in mainstream film and television, overall, the industry still a participant in systemic racism. There is still a strong and notable imbalance in representation in the top tiers of casting.
In my next segment I’ll be looking into how mainstream film and television deal with the problem of diversity (alluded to in this segment) as well as how mainstream film can maintain cinematic verisimilitude, cast white actors for character of color and not resort to colorface at all.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
This Week in Diversity: A Miscellany « the open book on 13 Nov 2009 at 4:10 pm
[...] Ah, Hollywood, will you never stop provoking discussion on race in casting? Not this week, certainly. Racialicious looks at the Screen Actor’s Guild’s annual diversity research and explains why the state of minorities in major acting roles is worse than the numbers suggest. [...]
Casting Race, Part 2.5: a Representative Interlude … « halloweenwitch on 19 Nov 2009 at 5:48 pm
[...] I heard recently that some group is awarding Glee with a diversity award, and this post echoes my thoughts about it – did the group giving this award even WATCH the show to see how the diverse cast members are USED? … There are a few SAG extras…but most of the extras non-SAG folks getting minimum wage (and yummy free food). And I can say from my time working as an extra, that extra casting directors do really want to have diverse background actors…at least in the …Continue Reading… [...]