Stark reality of TV reflected on awards night

When cameras pan across the faces of eager, anxious Emmy Award nominees at tonight’s ceremony, TV viewers will see a record 12 AfricanAmericans vying for comedy and drama series acting honours. But it’s a lopsided outcome in the struggle for diversity.

Master of None star Aziz Ansari, who is of Indian heritage, is the sole AsianAmerican to be nominated for a continuing series lead or supporting role. Not a single Latino is included in the marquee acting categories.

An Emmy version of the 2015-16 #OscarsSoWhite protests would miss the point: Worthy films and performances from people of colour were snubbed by movie academy voters, while insiders say the scant Emmy love for non-black minorities largely reflects closed TV industry doors.

“There are a lot of us, but because we haven’t gotten the opportunity to shine you don’t know we’re around,” said Ren Hanami, an Asian-American actress who’s worked steadily on TV in smaller roles but found substantive, award-worthy parts elusive. The hard-won progress made by the African-American ‘Master of None’ star Aziz Ansari, who is of Indian heritage, is the sole Asian-American to be nominated at the Emmys. Randall Park in ‘Fresh off the Boat’.

stars and makers of Emmy-nominated shows including

and has brought them creative influence, visibility and, this year, nearly a quarter (23.5 per cent) of series cast nominations.

FIGHT FOR RIGHTS

A long record of fighting for civil rights is behind the gains, said Leonard James III, chair of the National Association for the Daniel Dae Kim in CBS’ ‘Hawaii Five-0’.

Advancement of Colored People (Naacp) Image Awards committee.

“We’ve been engaged with the Hollywood community for 100 years,” James said, including Naacp-led protests against D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation in 1915, just six years after the organisation was founded. “I think you’re beginning to see some of that work get very positive results.”

While such success is ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ actress Stephanie.

cheered by other ethnic groups, they say it illuminates how narrowly the entertainment industry views diversity despite the fact that Latinos and Asian-Americans are America’s first- and thirdlargest ethnic groups, respectively.

But it also stands as proof that change is possible with a combination of activism, education and business savvy, according to industry members and outsiders seeking change.

“TV has never been ‘brownish’,” said actorcomedian Paul Rodriguez, riffing on the title of the hit African-American family comedy. He starred in the 1984 sitcom a.k.a. Pablo, one of the handful of Latino-centred series, and wrote The Pitch, or How to Pitch a Latino Sitcom that Will Never Air, a 2015 stage show he reprised this month in Los Angeles because, he said, Hispanics haven’t gained ground.

BEST ALLIES

“They don’t put us on television enough for them to even know if it’s not working,” Rodriguez said. “They just assume it won’t work.”

Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress Stephanie Beatriz knows what can happen when those with power are part of the solution.

The sitcom’s creators, Daniel J. Goor and Michael Schur, assembled people whose stories aren’t part of their own experience, she said, “but they want to help tell them. As straight white men, they are the strongest allies that underrepresented groups could ever have.”

—AP