Does The Daily Show count?
8 current recurring correspondents.
4 White
2 black
1 Middle Eastern
1 Hispanic
So you just want to pass it over without discussion?
By my count:
3 white
2 black (I thought Wilmore counted, I guess he’s a contributor even thought he’s usually called a correspondent…)
1 Asian/white
1 Hispanic
1 Indian of Muslim background, even though he’s listed as “Middle East correspondent”
To quote Dr. Seuss…“Ask me tomorrow, but not today!”
:dubious: Wow, Alessan, that was some gratuitous prickliness there.
I interpreted AK84’s point as being the perfectly reasonable observation that American stereotypes about “Middle Easterners” generally aren’t considered to apply to Israeli Jews, even though they’re in the Middle East.
Similarly, Australians like Chase on House aren’t subject to “Far East” stereotypes, even though they’re just as far east of the US as, say, China and Japan are.
To read into that remark an insinuation that somehow Israelis “don’t belong” in the Middle East looks to me like one hell of a stretch.
Oh, and happy Pesach, by the way.
So you’re saying Israelis/Jews are as alien to the Middle East as Anglo Europeans are to the Americas and Oceania?
What is wrong with you?
No personal remarks in this forum, please. And AK84 and Alessan, I appreciate your decision to step back from your argument. But if you want to discuss the Middle East, do it in Great Debates. This discussion is just about minorities and TV.
Yeah, sorry about that. I hadn’t realized what forum I was in when I posted. AK happened to hit on a pet peeve of mine, and I basically blew a fuse. Won’t happen again.
Same here. Without getting into the political issues, though, I do still think it’s reasonable to argue that as far as American popular entertainment stereotypes are concerned, Israeli Jews are generally not perceived as fitting into a “Middle Easterner” ethnic minority category in the same way that, say, Iraqi Muslims or Lebanese Christians are.
Well, without wanting to dive into the “Is Israel Middle-Eastern?” debate, the actor’s ethnicity is maybe Israeli (which, Middle-Eastern or not, is still a minority ethnicity in the US), since he was born in Israel, although his parents were from Russia he left Israel when he was 7. In any case, I’m fairly sure his character, a fair-skinned man named Captain Renard and speaking with an American accent, is not supposed to be Middle-Eastern.
But yeah, Grimm seems reasonably good for racial representation for that area of the country.
A couple more shows:
Leverage:
5 main characters:
3 white
1 black
1 unknown - maybe white, maybe mixed white and something else (Sophie).
The guest characters are almost always white, even though they go all across the country and the people that ask for their help are poor and oppressed.
Dexter, season six:
Main cast:
2 white (Dexter, Deb, Quinn, Harry)
1 Japanese (Masuka)
1 white Hispanic (Angel)
1 black Hispanic (Laguerta)
Other characters:
5 white (Travis, Gellar, Harrison, Matthews, Louis)
1 Hispanic (Jamie)
2 black (Brother Sam, Anderson)
Castle:
5 white (Castle, Beckett, Ryan, Alexis, Martha)
1 Hispanic (Esposito)
2 black (Lanie, Gates)
I was watching You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and they were definitely portrayed as very Middle Eastern
There’s also the issue of cultural misrepresentation. A great example is the above mentioned “2 Broke Girls.” The black character is a lech, a stereotypical skeevy old black dude. The Asian character, Han, has been widely criticized for being drawn within the ugliest, most racist stereotypes, with an inaccurate classic “comedic Asian” accent, short jokes, sexless Asian jokes and down the list, and when asked directly about it, the showrunner inexplicably and offensively said that he couldn’t be racist because he’s… gay.
There was an article in last week’s Entertainment Weekly about the “problem” of Raj Koothrapali on “Big Bang Theory” who is yet again, the sexless Asian. And not just the sexless Asian, but that stereotype taken to its outside limits by giving him selective mutism in the presence of women.
Does it do much good to have these sorts of characters on shows when they’re not actually representations of Asians (or hispanics or blacks) but of white people’s interpretations of what (funny) Asians would be like?
This is true, and the idea that a show centered around a family or a small group of friends might be largely monocultural isn’t really a problem – when those shows are set in major urban areas and the cast never encounters a cashier, cop, waiter, cabbie or background extra on the set who isn’t white, that’s just sloppy, lazy and unacceptable.
But what is a problem is that major network shows that are monocultural and not white are vanishingly rare. Unless I’m forgetting something, the last one was “The George Lopez Show” which was cancelled five years ago. Before that, it was “Living Single” which ended in 1998, 6 years before Lopez came on the air. (This is specifically regarding shows on the big 4 broadcast networks, not cable, or the consistently 5th place and not fully available WB/UPN/CW.)
When 35% of the country’s population cannot turn on their TV and see people who look like them and aren’t caricatures on any regular basis, something is very, very wrong.
Glee, a show where the diversity of its cast is an important part of its premise, has a higher percentage of racial minorities than the state where it’s set, although African-Americans are underrepresented. According to Wikipedia, Ohio is about 86% white (84% non-Hispanic white), 12.5% black, and 1.5% Asian.
Adding up everyone who’s ever been credited as a main cast member on Glee, I get 17 people. Twelve of them are white (71%), one is black (6%), and two are Asian (12%). The two remaining characters are played by multiracial actors but the racial backgrounds of the characters are not totally clear. One is identified as Hispanic on the show and the other is “vaguely Eurasian”.
The black character on 2 Broke Girls isn’t a lech. He’s more of a stand-in grandfather for the titular girls. Aside from Han’s accent, the biggest joke at his expense is his cheapness. Is cheapness a stereotypically Asian thing?
And citing Raj as an example of misrepresenting minorities because he can’t speak to girls on a show about barely-functioning nerds is so missing the point it’s not funny.
Not to mention the fact that until Bernadette came along, Raj got more action than Howard did. It’s only since the other three got into relationships that Raj turned into the odd man out.
Cheapness is a stereotype of Chinese people.
I honestly had no idea. I knew of its connection to Jewish people and Roma, but “Chinese people are cheap” is a new one on me.
And Scots. So if you’re a Chinese-Scottish practicing Jew, then you could probably buy rounds at the bar the entire night and still get jokes at your expense.
I’ve heard many negative Roma stereotypes, but never that one specifically.
Han is Korean, although an audience who falls for such stereotypes might not make the distinction. I would say, though, that there are more jokes about his size than his cheapness.
Back to the OP.
Friends, Frasier, Sex in the City, and Seinfeld are former examples what you are talking about. Yes, I know that some white people have no minority friends whatsoever, but they’d be living in Bensonhurst, or Bel-Air, or Sand Point, Idaho, not New York City.
Frasier lives in Seattle, which is almost 70% white.