“Friends,” “Sex and the City,” and “Alias” are all quality shows, but the lack of characters played by minorities is conspicuous.
It is important to have more characters and programs that feature minority cultures and minorities because they give people a better representation of the world around them.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) released in October its “2003 TV Diversity Report” of the television and movie industry, and the number of minority roles in front of the camera is surprisingly low. The NAACP report stated that during last season, Fox featured 121 ethnic characters in a regular or recurring role. CBS was a close second with 99. Both NBC and ABC have lagged on hiring people of different nationalities for their television programs. For the 1999-2001 seasons both networks reportedly only featured 35 characters on screen of an ethnic background. They more than doubled that number for last season.
Television networks have made strides to increase the number of characters of an ethnic descent in front of the camera through the years, and though their effort is commendable it is not enough.
When I watch a movie set in San Francisco and pay close attention to the scenes, hardly any people of ethnic background are in the shots. When people of a particular ethnicity are in a scene it is only because the location is relevant to that ethnic group. For instance, all the people who are Asian seem to hang around Chinatown because that’s the happening place to be for Asian people.
Having grown up in the Bay Area I know that when you walk downtown the makeup of the city isn’t like what is being portrayed on television or in movies. There are people from all walks of life every which way you turn.
According to the U.S. Census approximately 49.7 percent of San Francisco’s population is Caucasian. A close second to the population of Caucasian people in San Francisco are Asians consisting of 30.8 percent. The rest of the population is Latino, who makes up 14.1 percent and African American, who make up 7.8 percent.
The percentage gap between the Caucasian and Asian populations are not that big, so how can you tell me that in the movie scenes set in San Francisco there should not be more people of different cultural backgrounds in the crowds.
It is very frustrating to not be able to be represented fairly in the eyes of the media. By having such a low number of people of a different descent in front of the camera the media is not dispelling the stereotypes that anyone might have about a particular minority, but justifying people’s thoughts on certain ethnicities.
The progress is slowly but surely coming along.
The media should no longer be one-sided, instead representative of everyone in the country.
