I don't have cable TV. I haven't had it in a couple of years. It's one thing to be ignored and not pay for it but another to pay for being ignored, as people of color are on TV.
As the new fall television season nears I have noticed that nothing much has changed, at least on network TV, as far as diversity is concerned. There are three shows on NBC, one with Boris Kodjoe, one with Blair Underwood and another with Jimmy Smits. I'll give NBC its due for that but NBC is also the network that will air a show about a call center in India that from the promos looks dangerously racially offensive.
Other than that the new TV season seems as lily White as ever. It gets so bad sometimes that I find myself just scanning channels looking for a person of color on the screen. And when I see one I stop and watch. It doesn't really matter whether it's a commercial or an actual show I'll watch it. Well except for anything produced by Tyler Perry.
I can remember hearing older people talk about how back in the day they essentially did the same thing, looked for a person of color on TV and then if they saw one they watched no matter what it was about.
So it seems that in the new millennium, as the world changes by leaps and bounds, some things never change. Namely, television is as White as ever, heck even more White actually. In the 80's and 90's there were quite a few People of Color on network TV. So TV is actually going backwards.
PBS even seems to be less diverse than ever.
According to people who are supposed to know; African Americans and people whose ancestors hail from Spanish speaking countries (sorry but I really hate the word Hispanic*) watch more TV then other groups.
Which makes me wonder; if most of the people on TV were People of Color would White people watch?
*I hate the term Hispanic because it tells you nothing about a persons heritage. People whose ancestry is from Spanish speaking countries have very different cultures and histories. So the use of the term Hispanic seems like a way of ignoring a persons culture and lumping everyone in a cultureless pot. This country has already taken away most of African Americans pre-American history and culture and now its trying to do it again with the term Hispanic.
