Kenya Barris, creator of ABC’s “Black-ish,” was motivated to write the comedy about an African-American family’s efforts to honor its heritage in part by the unreality of what he grew up watching on television.
“I saw ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ and thought, ‘What part of New York is this?’ ” recalled Barris, who is black. “It’s not about being diverse. It’s about being true to the world.”
His show comes 15 years after civil rights groups, galvanized by a lineup of new network series almost entirely devoid of minority characters, sought and ultimately won agreements from major broadcasters to put programs on the air that better reflect the nation’s population.
An Associated Press analysis of regular cast members of prime-time comedies and dramas on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox found more black actors but not other minorities. Casts at three of the four networks are still whiter than the nation as a whole.
That’s in contrast to a fall season that offered Asian-American crime fighters and Latino families.
Gina Rodriguez, the Golden Globe-winning star of the CW network’s new telenovela-inspired comedy, “Jane the Virgin,” knows what it’s like to be left out of the TV picture.
“Ten years ago, when I was looking at that screen and didn’t see myself at all, I knew there was no place (for me),” she said.
TV history contains minority success stories. Desi Arnaz loved Lucy in the 1950s; The “Roots” miniseries set viewership records in the 1970s; and Bill Cosby was television’s father figure in the 1980s.
But by the fall of 1999, ABC, NBC and Fox each had prime-time casts that were 86 percent white — at a time the U.S. Census put the non-Latino white population at 71.9 percent.
Jennifer Salke, NBC’s entertainment president, says shows with all-white casts “would just never fly” at NBC. All 13 of the network’s scripted shows this fall had at least one minority cast member. None,
however, enjoy marquee status: Alfre Woodard is the U.S. president on “State of Affairs,” but the show’s star is Katherine Heigl.
On ABC, which has a nearly identical percentage of blacks on the air as NBC, Kerry Washington of “Scandal” and Viola Davis of “How to Get Away With Murder” are the leads.
Still, Jason George, an actor who works on diversity issues for the Screen Actors Guild, said he’s seen progress with minority actors getting more well-rounded roles.
“You’re suddenly a person and not just a representative of a culture,” he said. “As an actor, that’s what you want.”
Some key findings
ABC, NBC and Fox have a higher percentage of blacks in prime time than there is in the general population — a significant change over 1999.
While Latinos are the largest minority group at more than 17 percent of the population, only Fox and ABC have Latino representation of as much as 10 percent.
CBS, the nation’s most popular network, had the most diversity 15 years ago and now has the least.
