The Mary Sue: The best thing about the current “Golden Age of Television” is that there’s so much of it. Sure, to us fans and consumers of content, it can seem a bit overwhelming, but every new TV show or limited series provides hundreds of jobs to hundreds of working professionals, many of them women, men of color, or members of other marginalized groups who are typically underemployed.
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Counting people of Middle Eastern decent as "white" is not new, not is it specific to the DGA. Most minority breakdowns (college applications, or the United States Census, for example) group people of Middle Eastern decent as white. It seems like this study has more problems than just the diversity statements, namely, the method by which the study counted television series and episodes. But this article fights a couple of different battles. The beginning of the article decries the lack of diversity in American television, but the inaccurate minority breakdown would mean that there are more diverse directors and producers in American television than the study would suggest. That's not to say either point is invalid. I have personally encountered a problem identifying my ethnicity on forms (I am mixed race; I have been occasionally unsatisfied when I could not choose to check multiple boxes or had to check other), and so I am personally invested in creating more diversity friendly ethnicity breakdowns.
On the one hand, I agree that it is a problem that the (presumably) white men who are conducting the diversity studies are not counting certain groups as “others”. How can you have a real count of the state of diversity when they are not counting various groups? On the other hand, it might be a good thing that these counters do not notice difference when looking at various people. Italians used to be considered “black”, and now they are just people. They did not totally lose their cultural identity now that they are considered part of the majority. I think it might be a really good thing that certain groups are seeming less and less “minority” and more just “people”. It shows that prejudice is on the downslide as the differences seem less important. Conversely, the groups that look obviously different such as women and African Americans, are still firmly counted as minority groups. They cannot just blend into being a white man, so this study does show that appearance is still a way that people look at otherness.
The breakdown of the DGA study is sad, but not surprising unfortunately because overall the television industry is dominated by white men. Aside from the off camera representation, there are not that many shows that focus on telling minority stories. I think these days we are doing better, but still not good enough. Not only does more representative make for better television and more interesting stories, but it also combats the narrative that only white dominated movies and television are going to succeed with viewership numbers. Hopefully, by cultivating more diverse story tellers we are encouraging more diverse stories that go outside the the stereotypes and side characters. However, I also find it deeply ironic that a study about the progress of diversity failed to accurately represent minorities in television. Like the article, it makes me wonder about the real number of minority directors working today.
I think that the largest issue with the study trying to analyze the rise of inclusion in the television industry is that they were analyzing sheer numbers and not percentages. When you are trying to analyze numbers from a group in which the total is changing constantly, it is much clearer and realistic to analyze the information with percentages instead of a flat numerical count. A way that they could do this would be to take the total number of listed jobs for directors, for example, and find the number that count as minorities, and the number that are not minorities and get a percentage for each. Then the following year they would do it again and then be able to compare percentages. Right now they are looking at it and saying that simply because there are more minorities in attendance that it is more inclusive, despite the fact that there are also more non minorities in attendance as well.
While the percentage increases of minority and female involvement in this season of the "golden age of television" is encouraging, it was concerning to read about some of the loopholes in the DGA report. I found it interesting how the article stated that this false sense of diversity present in the industry stems from the while male lens that certain castings or statistics seem diverse to them, from a privileged and advantageous perspective. This phenomenon reminds me a lot of the concept of "white feminism", which is a type of lackluster, half-assed feminism originating from white women that fails to acknowledge intersectionality and the varying layers of privilege present in society. This kind of blanketing of diversity in the entertainment industry is especially dangerous, particularly when now more than ever we need to hear the voices and experiences of minorities in art and performance.
The concept of diversity and inclusion is an interesting one because we don't always think about it as a subjective thing, because in a perfect world it wouldn't be, but it is. What people consider to be diversity changes depending on who you are, and where you grew up, and what you believe. Is that right? Of course not. Diversity should, and does have one meaning that we should all learn and stick to but so often when we take a step toward diversity we stop, and say okay we are done now no more back to white people. This is happening a lot in our culture now with the stories of black people. More than ever we are seeing stories about black families and black women, and it is a huge step forward for our industry and one we should not retreat from. However, a lot of people think of this as the diversity the industry needed and that there is no where else to go. To which I would say, where are the stories about asian americans, and about latinx people and people with disabilities. We are getting there but too many people think diversity is a simple fix, when actually it is a very complicated multi faceted problem that is going to take years and a lot of people from different backgrounds to solve.
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