Dimension

under represented by a factor of nearly three to one.” Even
worse: Among scripted TV creators on broadcast networks,
minorities are underrepresented 11 to one. The realities are
that much more troubling when you consider the TVwatching
growth in households of color: According to a
Even Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, which debuted on
Netflix last year to near unanimous praise, was criticized
for its “marked absence of South and East Asian American
women.” America’s middle class is rapidly dissolving, yet
few shows engage the country’s working poor. Despite
Among scripted TV creators, minorities
are underrepresented eleven to one.
Nielsen poll, African Americans and Asian Americans
have both become a larger share of the viewing audience
— and one in five viewers overall are now Hispanic.
This increased viewership among people of color arrives
at a moment when companies are offering money
and opportu nity in unprecedented amounts. Out of this
cornucopia, online streaming platforms like Amazon
Prime and Netflix have emerged as the new gatekeepers,
holding the keys to a more idyllic television topography.
It’s time to ask ourselves what new stories should be told
and how creators will go about telling them.
Progress isn’t solely a matter of narrowing the color
gap on TV but of widening the types of stories that reach
us. A Colombian-American friend recently mentioned
how shows like Jane the Virgin and Telenovela, which
cultivate experiences from Latin perspectives, failed to
offer a window into those worlds outside of the melodramatic
telenovela structure. “They haven’t learned how to
speak to Latin Americans beyond that format,” she said.
Similarly, shows like Empire and Starz’s Power, traffic in
a one-sided notion of black affluence: Their protagonists
acquired wealth through illegal means — selling drugs.
TV’s current gold rush, shows fail to portray the full
plurality of our day-to-day existence.
In 2015, Shonda Rhimes — creative architect behind
ABC’s Thursday-night scheduling block of Grey’s Anatomy,
Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder — gave a
speech at the Human Rights Campaign gala in which
she voiced her contempt for the way we describe shows
that offer more radiant interpretations of the human
experience. “I really hate the word diversity,” she said. “I
have a different word: normalizing. I’m normalizing TV. I
am making TV look like the world looks.” When I think
of Rhimes’ speech, I think back to UPN and the crop of
shows that, to a young black kid growing up in Southern
California, felt like the world — my world. And I have to
wonder how this era of television will look to us in another
two decades. Will it seem as inclusive in hindsight as we
professed at the time? Or will it prove, like the UPN-led
surge of the ’90s, to have been a momentary gain? The
burden shifts to all of us: not just the networks but the
creators — and, as those whose support ultimately dictates
a show’s success, the consumers. After all, a renaissance is
only as meaningful as the art that defines it.
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