By D. W. O’Dell

Ghettos still exist, although the word is harder to find today than back in the 1960s. One of the most common uses of the word refers to the fact that Black performers on television are largely relegated to the “ghetto” of UPN sitcoms.

A 2000 study by the NAACP lamented the lack of diversity on network television, and a recent article in the LA Daily News followed up by noting that while there were multi-ethnic casts in dramas (Lost, Grey’s Anatomy), outside of UPN there were almost no minorities on sitcoms (Bernie Mac and Donald Faison on Scrubs being the exceptions).

Interestingly, in the article Anne-Marie Johnson of the Screen Actors Guild did not call for more roles for minorities. She probably knew where that would lead—more casting calls for pimps, hos, and kooky sidekicks who say things like, “Dyn-o-mite!” She instead wanted more race blind casting.

Calling for more roles for Black actors would be futile, although it might possibly lead to the hiring of more Black writers who could “write Black.” But as long as Blacks are limited to roles written for Blacks, they will never have a shot at the vast majority of roles offered in Hollywood. True diversity will come only when Blacks can compete for roles as accountants, doctors, and insurance agents.

Of course there are limits. A show about a family where the parents are of one race while an actor of a different race was cast as their child would lead to confusion. Was the child from a previous relationship? Did the mother have an affair and the father is too dim to recognize that fact (this has been a running joke on King of the Hill for years)?

What constitutes racial casting anyway? In Memoirs of a Geisha, Chinese and Malaysian actresses portrayed Japanese characters. There was an outcry, but was it for something worse than the casting of a White actor to play an Asian role in Miss Saigon? At least Asians were playing Asians. Lou Diamond Phillips was criticized for playing Navaho character Jim Chee even though Phillips is only 1/8 Cherokee, but he still looked the part.

A small milestone was passed a couple of years ago when someone observed (who knows if they were right) that Mission Impossible 2’s combo of Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton was the first mixed race romantic pairing in a major Hollywood movie that was not about a mixed race couple. We’ve come a long way since the time Laugh-In showed James Garner walking off screen with his arm around Theresa Graves, followed by Artie Johnson’s German soldier saying, “Verrry interesting. But they just got a test pattern in Birmingham!”