SNL Is Under Fire From Civil Rights Groups For Its Lack Of Diversity

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Beejoli Shah

11/01/13 04:30PM

Filed to: SNL

Saturday Night Live, which has recently drawn much criticism from bloggers for its lack of diversity on its cast—namely, the dearth of black female comedians—has now come under fire from civil rights groups as well.

As THR reports, executive director Rashad Robinson of ColorOfChange.org, penned an open letter to SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels, lambasting him for the lack of diversity on the variety show. Robinson cites cast members Jay Pharoah's comments to The Grio about the lack of diversity, as well as Kenan Thompson's comments to TV Guide about black women who audition for SNL not "being ready." As Robinson states:

I was deeply troubled by SNL cast member Kenan Thompson’s recent comment that Black women comics just aren’t “ready” to join your show. Thompson’s remark gives cover to disturbing, long-held industry myths that Black women entertainers as a whole are untalented, unrelatable and unprofitable — while conveniently sidestepping SNL’s glaring (and much-remarked) deficit of Black onscreen talent that has come to define the show for nearly four decades now.
[…]
In the 39-year history of SNL, just three Black women have joined the show’s repertory cast. The first, Danitra Vance, was hired after the show had already been on air for a decade, and quit after a short period because she was only given tired roles written expressly to demean and dismiss Black women, including baby mamas, maids and women with a bad attitude. That was 1986 — when I was in elementary school — and it seems little has changed over the course of my lifetime.

Michaels has yet to respond, though he did tell the Associate Press on Thursday that ""It's not like it's not a priority for us. It will happen. I'm sure it will happen." Though I'm not at all advocating for Michaels to hire performers who don't deserve a role, given that he's in charge of finding and approving talent for the cast, how many people have to speak up before he changes the status quo?

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crazyloco505 Beejoli Shah 11/02/13 08:23AM

Can we please find out how diverse the Gawker newsroom is? Every guy and gal I look up in there looks pretty white to me...

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Beejoli Shah crazyloco505 11/02/13 08:48PM

You're right, my Shah family ancestors DID sail over on the Mayflower.

Guantanamo Baby Beejoli Shah 11/03/13 11:55AM

You're not white, but the lack of diversity at Gawker still stands.

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Beejoli Shah Guantanamo Baby 11/03/13 12:07PM

http://gawker.com/5732006/about-…

20 writers. 9 are not white. I'm no math major but I think that's 45% diverse, 55% white. Tell me again about the lack of diversity at Gawker?

To be clear, though, I'm not advocating for diversity hires simply to meet some sort of racially apologetic quota. SNL, for better or worse, has become a cornerstone of American comedic culture. I'll go into this on detail in a post tomorrow breaking down last night's episode with host Kerry Washington but regardless of numbers, percentages, and other inflated metrics that we'll each interpret differently to back up our own viewpoint, but from where I'm standing, what SNL has done is nowhere near enough.

Guantanamo Baby Beejoli Shah 11/03/13 07:23PM

It's been a while since I noticed the masthead and looked up everyone's pictures. Seems the ratio has improved. Good for you guys. Seriously, because it wasn't very long ago that Gawker.com was nothing but white writers. From my perspective, though, the low number of Hispanic and/or Black writers on Gawker.com, a site that makes a living out of pointing out others' cultural insensitivity, is still hypocritical. These are the country's two largest minority groups which also happen to be the country's two most disenfranchised minority groups. The real issue is that we are still living in a society that systematically leaves Hispanic and Black communities out of the equation for better adult job training and better education for young people. This is why Gawker and SNL probably get a lot less applicants who are Hispanic and Black applying for these creative jobs. Because when you're just trying to survive, you don't have time to write jokes. That is the real issue I hope you'll cover in your article. Who gives a shit who SNL hires? I want to know what people are doing in their towns to create economic opportunity for anyone unlucky enough to be born into poverty. It's so much easier to just criticize Lorne Michaels or get our panties in a twist over something ignorant that Kenan Thompson said.

Beejoli Shah Guantanamo Baby 11/03/13 09:07PM

That actually is exactly what I want to cover! Cord Jefferson touched upon that topic back in March, during a debate about whether writers should write for free: certain professions, unfortunately especially creative ones, tend to favor those of a certain socioeconomic status. Those who can afford to take a creative pursuit without worrying (as much! Not to say that they're all trust fund babies with nary a care in the world) about how to keep the electric bills on, and not become malnourished off a steady diet of potato chips and ramen. As he states:

But the truth is, in times when I couldn't sell a pitch to even the smallest of alt-weeklies, my parents were able to help me out with a rent check. If those times had stretched out too long, the worst thing that could have happened was I might have had to move back into their house. I was never going to starve or be homeless for lack of a paycheck.

The article—a great read, something I say completely unbiased, as I loved it months before I ever started working here—goes on to discuss how fortune often favors those of us who take these creative pursuits in writing, and I find in the acting world it's much of the same. A class at the Upright Citizens Brigade? $400. It takes a minimum of 4 classes to complete the program (though many of the most seasoned vets at UCB take the later levels more than once), and that doesn't factor in the multitude of free shows, hundreds of auditions, time needed to be spent without a cent coming in for it, that it takes to really be seen and "make it." It's an unfortunate fact that many of the unrepresented minorities on shows like SNL come from a socioeconomic strata that doesn't allow them the pursuit of such endeavors. And I plan to talk about that, and at length. But there are still people doing it: we luckily live in a world where kids are getting famous off YouTube, Vine, even off simple things they shoot with their friends with no production value. I don't want SNL to hire diversity simply for the sake of, I'd just love for them to look harder because, especially now when the world is shrinking as rapidly as it is, it's honestly not that hard to find talented actors and actress of SNL caliber, making comedy in less traditional places.

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George Glass Beejoli Shah 11/01/13 05:05PM

A few things are to blame, I think.

1) The giant boom in improv/sketch in the last decade (UCB especially) has been with mostly white performers/students. The people trying to learn sketch/improv are mostly white so they get better at it. That’s who is taking the classes. Maybe because economically they can do so more easily, maybe they see others like themselves doing it and so it’s easier to imagine they can do it too (a lack of minority role models could make it less something minority actors think of pursuing), but for whatever reason that’s the reality and that’s where Lorne goes to find talent as those programs build skills that work well on SNL.

2) SNL needs to look in new places for talent. There are hilarious people who aren’t being spotted. SNL needs to make it a priority to check out those diversity talent showcases at the networks but also to talk to casting directors who work with a lot of minority talent, and to browse the web a lot more rather than go to UCB, Groundlings, etc. (all great places with talent but not the only places.) And to look for new places for their writers as well. So the minority actors have something to perform that speaks to their experience once they’re hired. Maybe they’re doing this already in which case they need to cast an even wider net.