Stereotypes Magnified : Minorities in TV: Black, White Issue

Actress Gail Cameron can laugh about it now, but a tinge of anger still creeps into her voice when she recalls auditioning last year for the role of a court reporter in a situation comedy.

The casting director had told her earlier that the role called for her to “be professional” in the courtroom, and “relaxed and more animated” when in the judge’s chambers.

When she arrived to read for the director and producer, the instructions became more explicit.

“They told me they wanted me to be like Vanna White while in the courtroom and like Marla Gibbs when I was in the judge’s chambers,” she said.

Be Her ‘Normal Self’

After a run-through, the director said her courtroom performance was just fine, but asked if she could “get down” in the judge’s chambers, just be her “normal self.” Cameron could hear what was coming, but she patiently re-read the part. Finally, the director told her exactly what for him was the heart of the problem.

“Can you be more black?” he asked.

Cameron exploded. “I told him that I’ve been black all my life and this is the way that I and most of the black people I know talk,” she said. “I asked him, ‘How would you act if I asked you to act more white?’ I guess they wanted to show that black people may sound like the rest of the world in the working environment, but they are actually different behind closed doors. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.”

To many in and around Hollywood, that incident means more than the failure of one actor or actress to get a TV role; it tells where blacks and other minorities seem to fit into the most powerful and influential medium in America, and ultimately where they seem to fit in the minds of Americans as a whole.

While the director’s biased view merely reflects attitudes and misinformation that many individual Americans share, when he shapes a character for the television program, his impression of minorities will be multiplied a million-fold week after week.

Interviews with nearly 100 actors, writers, producers, casting directors, advertising executives, film and television critics, psychologists and psychiatrists--both minority and non-minority--make clear that a similar scenario is played out daily in all of America’s visual mediums--television, movies, commercials and music videos.

The result, these experts say, is that those mediums, the most powerful molders of public opinion, taste and attitude, reinforce and magnify the gap between whites and minorities.

Advertising executives say there is fear in corporate offices across the nation that using minorities in commercials will keep ad messages from connecting or actually turn off white consumers.

Consequently, black actors are steered away from certain commercials, while television spots identical to the ones on network television are often made with Latinos and Asians, but aired only on Spanish-language or Asian-oriented stations.

Many in the industry contend that white film and television executives are leery of dramatic programs centered on a minority character because they think whites aren’t interested in seeing them. And, they say, when white writers, directors and producers do make such programs, their limited perception of minorities is often drawn from earlier distorted movie and television stereotypes. Consequently, they further perpetuate the myths.

Meanwhile, members of minorities who work in similar capacities are confined mostly to minority projects and seldom are involved as writers, director or producers of films, television shows or commercials about whites.

Microcosm of Society

“I think what you’re really seeing is a metaphor of what it is to be a minority in the society,” said film and television producer Carol Isenberg. “You’re seeing in media a microcosm of the larger society.”

At first glance, this does not seem to square with evidence that shows minorities atop nearly every major entertainment field.

Bill Cosby, for instance, has been America’s favorite father on the nation’s No. 1 show for the last three years. Eddie Murphy is the biggest single box office draw in the movie industry, with films that have made nearly a billion dollars in the last five years. Oprah Winfrey has replaced a white male, Phil Donahue, as the nation’s No. 1 daytime talk show host. Chicago Bulls basketball star Michael Jordan rakes in millions of dollars in commercial endorsements--far more than white sports celebrities.

But those successes and the images they create obscure the deeper problem, many inside Hollywood and the advertising industry say.

“You can’t concentrate on the top of the pyramid,” said Rodney Mitchell, the affirmative action administrator with the Screen Actors Guild. “If you do, you’ll get a distorted and misleading picture. You’ve got to look at the heart and soul, the performers who make up the body of those films and programs and advertisements. That’s where you make the real difference.”

13 Minority Characters

Although the Screen Actors Guild contract prods advertisers, film and television studios to present “a more accurate view of the American scene,” there are relatively few minority members among the hundreds of characters Americans tune in to see daily. For example, at ABC, on more than 100 shows with hundreds of roles, only 13 minority characters--12 blacks and one Eurasian--are regularly being portrayed each week. The numbers at CBS are similar.

NBC, currently the top-rated network, is far ahead of the others with 38 regular minority characters. It has four all-black shows and four dramatic series with minority central characters.

According to the Screen Actors Guild, while blacks, Latinos, Asians and American Indians account for about 22% of the nation’s population, they made up 13% of the on-camera appearances in film, television and commercials in 1987. But critics argue that even those numbers distort the story.

“They don’t tell you the quality, the depth of the role,” Mitchell said. “They don’t say whether it was a lead role, a supporting role, or just a person who appeared in the film.”

“Minorities are treated as exotics,” said Albert Johnson, professor of cinema studies at UC Berkeley and longtime director of the San Francisco Film Festival. “Most shows say that they’re not part of the mainstream. You are not part of what makes the system go.”

“Minorities are seldom the central theme of a show,” actor-producer Robert Hooks said. “Just think about all those made-for-TV movies about a woman who is dealing with divorce, or wife abuse or a family that has had some dramatic circumstance in their life. . . . Minorities deal with these same problems (but) we seem to be presented in a separate category. We don’t just deal with discrimination and gangs and crime. We have human, American stories to tell. Why aren’t minorities presented in those lights?”

Executives at CBS and ABC declined to discuss the use of minorities in their programs, but at NBC, Warren Littlefield, vice president in charge of prime-time programs, said the network has made increased minority images part of its programming priorities, and it has paid off.

“I think we woke up a while ago when we were in third place and we noticed that our shows lacked a variety of character,” Littlefield said. “We just set out in our development to try and do a more interesting picture, and one that more reflected the population that was out there in society. Our goal is not to hold up a mirror to society. Our goal is to entertain. But I do think we can entertain with characters that reflect society.”

But industry critics complain that while NBC is far ahead of the other networks in minority characters, it still largely represents a “sitcom ghetto.” Of the 38 minority characters on NBC, 26 are on all-black situation comedies.

“Dating from the time of slavery, whites, and some blacks, have seen blacks as comedians, comics, the clowns,” said Dr. Alvin Pouissant, psychiatrist, Harvard University faculty member and script consultant to Bill Cosby.

No Black Drama Series

“So, when the networks think black, they think comedy. There are no drama series, no black soaps, no black Dynasties or Dallases. That’s part of a legacy of a racially determined perspective. . . .”

Latinos and Asians, however, could argue that even a sitcom would be a step forward. There are currently no programs of any kind on either network built around Latino or Asian characters.

“From the Hispanic point of view, by and large, prime-time television says Hispanics are not part of America,” said Ed Cervantes, Columbia Pictures vice president in charge of comedy and current programs for television. “The Asian community could say the same thing. If you do exist, you do so in stereotypical roles. It feeds you images to live down to and not those to live up to. It’s saying to our youth that there’s nothing that exists for you.”

Ultimately, questions of a lack of balanced minority presentation must go to the genesis of programs and commercials, to the writers, producers, casting directors, advertising and the studio executives who create the programs. According to industry experts and studies, racial discrimination and bias have kept their ranks overwhelmingly white.

“Just look at me for example,” Cervantes at Columbia Pictures said. “I’m the only Hispanic who has a job like this in the entire industry at the studio or at a major studio. There are a few in the feature area at smaller independent studios. And I’ve been the only Hispanic doing this job since I got into it in 1981. The television industry has always thought of itself as more liberal than the rest of society. But it’s not. People tend to hire who they know, who they are comfortable with, who they are familiar with. And that’s usually not us.”

Michael Schultz, who is one of the handful of successful minority film directors, adds that minority members are pigeonholed when it comes to the kind of work they can expect.

“If you look at the films that blacks and other minorities produce, those films are comedies or music-related or action movies,” he said. “You don’t get the so-callled ‘serious film,’ the drama, the pieces that are literate.”

Bob Morones, who has cast numerous television shows and movies, said that despite his accomplishments, it is still tough sledding.

“Last year I won the equivalent of the Academy Award for casting for my work on ‘Platoon,’ ” he said. “Still, I’m lucky if I do two films a year. If I were white, I’d be working all the time. Everybody who gets a Hispanic project calls me, but that’s usually after they’re dissatisfied with the white casting director they already have.”

Roles Begin With Writers

But roles begin with writers. According to a Screen Writers Guild study of hiring practices from 1982 to 1985, racial discrimination accounted for minorities making up only 2% of the writers employed each year in films and TV.

“There are entire segments of the industry that are virtually inaccessible to minority writers,” the study said. “Preconceived notions among those who hire writers may shape the opportunities of . . . minority writers more than the talents of individual writers would warrant. . . .

“The perception is that white people can write for anyone, but black people can only write for blacks,” charges Daryl G. Nickens, who has written for “Benson,” “Webster,” and “Bustin’ Loose.” “If you say this, everyone is going to deny that this is true and point to the exceptions to the rule.”

When whites attempt to fashion viewing to appeal to a broad audience, their personal perception of what the public thinks of minorities and what they themselves think of minorities is ultimately reflected in commercials, television programs and film.

Many times those perceptions are misshaped racial stereotypes bred of ignorance, bias or even absorption of false images through the mediums in which they now operate, critics claim.

“You’ve got studio executives who do not know blacks or do not know Hispanics or Asians,” Cervantes at Columbia Pictures said. “They do not eat with them, do not lunch with them, do not play with them.

“You’ve got writers and producers in the exact same scenario, casting directors who only know minorities through 8-by-10 glossies or because they had previously cast them in a part.

“What they do know about minorities, they know from what they’ve seen on television, and then they write about minorities from what they’ve seen on TV.”

“Our social acceptance in Hollywood is very minimal,” added television and film producer Topper Carew. “There is no dialogue on the human level or a social level that helps bridge this gap that exists between so many of us. So a lot of the people who we deal with in this business deal with us on a stereotypical basis. They stereotype the cast coming through the door.”

Littlefield of NBC said certainly some of that is true.

“What happens in a network or in any situation where people get into the power seat (is that they) become removed from everything,” he said. “I’m influenced mostly by my high school and childhood upbringing, where I had a large number of minority friends.

“When I was in the eighth grade, I was bused from a primarily white neighborhood in Montclair, N.J., to an inner-city black neighborhood and a predominately black school. The high school I went to was about one-third black. I ended up making a lot of longtime black friends. I find that is unusual compared to the population that I interact with as an executive today.”

Either as they attempt to gauge society’s intolerance or as a result of their own biases, those in control make decisions that perpetuate the gap between the races, observers say.

“In advertising, there is some reticence on the part of clients in certain categories to use minorities or blacks,” said Tom Burrell, president of Burrell Advertising Agency in Chicago. “You won’t see much in cosmetics, hair care, personal hygiene or feminine hygiene, things to do with personal care, especially as it relates to beauty. I think it’s because there’s the feeling that the standards of American beauty are still decidedly white. That’s despite the fact that white women and models are going out and getting cosmetic surgery to puff up their lips, get their hair frizzed and trying to get suntans.”

‘Some Breakthroughs’

“I have had companies say to me personally that, ‘I don’t want to depreciate my company by having it identified with the black community,’ ” said Earl Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise, a national business magazine oriented toward blacks. “There are some breakthroughs, but there are still companies concerned about the racist tendencies that might exist in the general market. So they leave black people out so as not to offend what they perceive as their base business.”

Carolyn Jones, of the Carolyn Jones Advertising agency in New York, said some clients have pulled back advertisements featuring blacks because they felt their product was being viewed as “too black.”

Ads for Luxury Products

“That would happen particularly if the market studies showed that a large percentage of their consumers were black,” she said. “They felt that if white people perceived the product as largely consumed by blacks, they would not want to buy it.”

Makers of luxury products are often disinclined to use minorities in ads or seek minority customers, Burrell said.

“The more upscale products feel that by using minorities, it may take away some of the sophistication, the specialness, the exclusivity of their products,” he said. “That’s a racist response. In fact, every study out there shows that given the choice, minorities, particularly blacks, go for the higher priced, more quality product.”

In Hollywood, those who have pursued projects centered on minority characters often complain that America can identify with minorities as comedians, but is not prepared to accept them as central characters in drama--as whole human beings.

“It’s considered a gamble,” award-winning producer Stan Margulies said. “The classic opinion is that the audience responds to someone like themselves who has a problem to solve. There are those who say the audience will not identify with a Latino or a black or an Asian or a Native American. They are different. That’s the conventional thinking.”

Actor Tim Reid, who has co-starred in three television series and co-produced the highly regarded but recently canceled “Frank’s Place,” said he encountered that problem recently when he proposed to studio executives the true story of a single black man in Columbus, Ohio, who has adopted 36 children, five of whom he sent to college.

“They looked at me and said, ‘What’s the story?’ ” he said. “Three white guys adopt one baby in ‘Three Men and a Baby’ and it’s a movie, but this guy has adopted 36 children with no government assistance, no wife, didn’t take the easier route of being a foster parent and they say, ‘What’s the story?’ ”

A lead role played by Willem Dafoe in the Academy Award-winning movie “Platoon” was originally written for an Apache. “The (film) distribution people turned it around and said, ‘Why don’t you make this guy a white guy,’ ” recalled Morones, the casting director. “Even some of the best ideas get turned around because of old racist concepts.”

17 Years of Experience

Morones, who has 17 years of casting experience in television and film, recalls that when he wanted to do a show about the up-from-the-streets story of Latino boxing champion Paul Gonzalez, the studio executives wanted to center the show around a white policeman who had influenced Gonzalez instead of around Gonzalez. “They felt you needed a white lead to make people tune in,” Morones said.

It was the same story when San Francisco attorney David Minami and Los Angeles producer Joan Marks proposed the dramatic story of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American whose wrongful conviction during World War II gave legal justification for the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war. That decision was overturned by a federal judge in 1983, laying the groundwork for reparations to those interned or their descendants.

NBC and CBS turned down the project immediately. ABC took a run at it, and even called for a script, but later backed off.

“They didn’t feel that the American public would be sufficiently interested in an Asian-American story, which many people wanted to forget,” Marks said. “There are lots of rationalizations. Is there an Asian-American star big enough for people to tune in? Was the script good enough? But if it was the same story and it was all Caucasian, it would be done in two seconds.”

They gave Margulies a similar argument 10 years ago when he wanted to do a mini-series about a black family during slavery.

“They said, ‘Who is going to tune in on a show that is basically about black people,’ ” Margulies said. “The conventional wisdom was that white America might tune in for 10 minutes and say, ‘Oh, it’s about blacks,’ and tune out.”

The series was “Roots,” still the highest-rated mini-series in the history of television.

“The avalanche of enthusiasm after the show aired was overwhelming and everyone was dancing in the aisles,” Margulies said. “But the hard fact is that in the years that followed, there were very few serious shows about blacks in America. I like to think that television can be an incredible unifying force, and certainly for the week ‘Roots’ was on the air, it was. But it takes more than one book, one television show, one anything to make a lasting impact.”