I think it comes down to how comfortable one is with people of color being invisible in America. I see it as a huge problem that leads to all sorts of subsidiary problems.
Of course it is a huge problem, not disagreeing with you at all, but it’s not a problem started by sitcoms or almost every TV program ever made with a lack of realistic diversity in its cast and story, those are merely symptoms of the offensive behavior of actual people. This is merely art imitating reality.
No, it’s a symptom, not the disease. Black people are largely invisible in mainstream America and that includes mainstream sitcoms. Seinfeld wasn’t making a comment on society, just maintaining the status quo. Good art challenges, mediocre is fine with just getting along.
It’s not a coincidence that just as people of color are getting some more representation in mainstream culture and politics, America experiences a white supremacist backlash. Seinfeld is part of that. It’s not Birth of a Nation, but it’s closer on the spectrum than it should be.
Yep, minorities being “invisible” culturally was a problem, but I think most would agree it has steadily become less of a problem over time. But just because it’s a cultural problem does not mean every aspect of culture has to work to “fix it”, in that context a sitcom with four main characters and all of them being white, is not committing any great sin. There is plenty of room for both improving diversity of representation and having such shows exist, both in the 1990s and even today, frankly.
In my mind it really comes down to the type of show being made. For example, a police procedural set in the NYPD that had nothing but a white cast would be problematic to me, because not only are you not representing minorities–you are actually representing reality incorrectly and doing so in a way that preferences whites. The real NYPD is 40% minority, a police procedural set in that department should be expected to have a number of minority characters.
A show about a wealthy rancher in Montana and his family? Well, I have much less of a problem with that show being overwhelmingly white. Montana is 88.9% white, 0.6% black, 4.1% Hispanic and 6% Native American. So not only is actual Montana fairly white-washed, the specific setting of “wealthy rancher and his family” is probably likely to be even more whitewashed than other parts of Montana. FWIW a number of shows set in Montana and Wyoming in the past decade have tended to feature Native Americans characters prominently–in truth probably overstating the degree of interaction whites have with the Native population, but I also think “Westerns” there is a strong cultural and historical argument for trying to feature Native Americans in the cast and story if possible.
The recent Wheel of Time series on Amazon Prime had a multiracial cast, even though the actual novel series was mostly white people (although it’s honestly a little vague, Robert Jordan didn’t dwell a ton on skin color and etc), but the fantasy world of Wheel of Time can frankly be represented by people of any race, since there isn’t much of a compelling reason to go for an all-white cast, I think doing so would be a mistake, because it is good to represent minorities in film and television.
It is at the same time both a symptom and a vector that spreads the disease.
The question isn’t just whether a particular show can justify having an all-white case, but also which shows get funded, by what creators, and by whom?
Exactly, and how comfortable one is with the disease determines how comfortable one is with the symptoms.
In one of the later seasons of Friends, there was a multi-episode arc in which both Joey and Ross are interested in a black professor at NYU. She initially has a relationship with Joey, then breaks up with him and has a relationship with Ross. I want to say this happened over six or seven episodes, but I could be wrong. It was fairly long-running, though.
So to that extent, Friends was more racially tolerant than Seinfeld.
Sure. Isn’t that the point of casting tokens?
Who cares? It was 1993 or so. TV was still more or less segregated. This is the era where South Park had their character “Token Black” (Tolkien these days), and it was both funny AND satirical.
Beyond that, it’s not like US society is super-integrated even now. Expecting a lot of diversity in people hanging out in a sitcom is unrealistic now, much less 30 years ago.
I don’t find either series offensive on the whole. Certain attitudes sure- I thought the whole Chandler’s dad thing unfunny back then, and it’s worse now. But on the whole, the characters were generally better than society as a whole about most stuff like that, which is something we tend to forget 30 years later.
“Who cares?”
The people excluded from society often care.
Sure, but what exactly can we do about a show that aired 30 years ago? At this point, who cares? It’s water under the bridge.
Learn from it so we can do better in the future?
Absolutely. But learning from them doesn’t change the original shows, and I’m against some sort of ban on them, or even specific episodes because they’re not quite up to 21st century PC standards.
Who said “ban”?
Like I said, I think that one’s comfort with the disease of systemic racism determines one’s comfort with its symptoms. As for why discuss it now, I urge you to read the thread title.
I pity anyone who might have seriously thought an over the top character like Jackie Chiles could be the solution to a lack of diversity.
I watch Seinfeld fairly regularly and the racial humor is generally well done, with the exception of Asian Americans. Those characters (the maitre 'd in The Chinese Restaurant, the hostile Chinese delivery people, and the angry mailman) - not to mention the character Donna Chang who is assumed to be “a Chinese woman” - are cringe-y in today’s eyes. As they were back then. It made me wonder if they had a ridiculous bias against Asian folks in the writer’s room.
The Black characters fare well - they’re not tokenized or stereotypical. Should Seinfeld have had more Black characters? I think it has to do with friendship networks, and frankly, it isn’t that surprising that this group had all white social circles. As others have noted, there are recurring characters (Mr. Morgan, Jackie Chiles) and guest stars (Coco the janitor, the supervisor who thinks Elaine is a janitor, Rebecca DeMornay [one of my favorite one-off characters], and Jean Paul) are dimensional characters, as much as they can be for their short appearances on the show.
It’s a comedic show, so I think the exaggerations and quirkiness of the characters make sense. The main characters are clueless on situations dealing with race, which gives us moments like Kramer being humiliated by showing up to his Black girlfriend’s house with a ridiculous tan, and the aforementioned Cigar Store Indian episode where at that time, the situations were incredibly cringeworthy.
didn’t one Friends actor date a Black woman?
Two of them did, actually. See my post above. That was a nine-episode arc.
Edited to add: Unless you mean in real life. I don’t know about that.