Broadcast Diversity Means More Than Just Numbers

The agreements between the media coalition led by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS television networks to hire and train more minorities are important steps toward diversifying the face of the entertainment industry. But many more efforts are needed to achieve the worthy ideal espoused decades ago by California Eagle editor Charlotta A. Bass: “To make the industry responsible morally for the content of its products, to struggle to lift higher artistic standards in the entertainment world, standards reflecting a sense of social duty and propriety rather than prejudice and vainglory.”

Broadcast-network presidents promise “greater minority participation at all levels.” The offending networks, however, are only some of the key players in an industry that needs reforming. No matter how many new faces appear on shows or behind the camera, the quality of the increased participation must not be neglected.

The roots of the current diversity talks go back to 1915. Then, a fledgling L.A. branch of the NAACP sent a wire to its New York headquarters warning about the content of D.W. Griffith’s “The Clansman.” The local chapter, the Ministerial Union and the Forum, a group of African American business and civic leaders, had appealed to the City Council to ban the film. On Feb. 6, 1915, headlines in the California Eagle crowed victory, but two days later, “The Clansman” opened at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. By the time it reached New York, the film had been renamed “The Birth of a Nation.”

The cultural challenge posed by Griffith’s work is still relevant today: Will the media arts be used in the service of white domination or will they convey the full expression of American life?

The NAACP-brokered diversity agreements echo this question. But their weakness is that they lack the clout of legally enforceable collective bargaining or consent decrees and thus ignore compelling structural realities of the industry that produced racial exclusion in the first place.

The economics of broadcast television differ significantly from those of pay cable and film. Aside from news and sports, the networks are primarily distributors of “product” made by independent production companies and studios, not parties to the agreements. The producers of TV shows generate profits by syndicating their programs in more than 100 markets around the country. The demographics of these markets are overwhelmingly white.

The networks assert that they are committed to new goals of hiring and training diverse writers, directors, producers and casting personnel; evaluating executive performance based on these goals; and contracting with minority-owned vendors and production companies. The issue left unanswered in the euphoria over the agreements is how will the networks persuade their program suppliers to diversify their content if what sells in white America is not racially mixed?

Similarly, entry to employment in the industry is almost exclusively through the door of the more than 30 crafts and professions that, with few exceptions, have historically favored a white, male membership. The unions have industrywide agreements that result in jobs only rarely going to nonmembers. Some, like the Screen Actors Guild, require employers to report minority hires and practice nondiscrimination, but most don’t. The agreements proposed by the NAACP-led coalition naively put the networks in charge of negotiating diversity with these strong unions that have a history of protecting their traditional membership.

Because the current activism was sparked by the glaringly all-white casts of major prime-time shows, the NAACP and its partners might do well to consult more closely with SAG during their monitoring efforts. The actors’ union has a comparatively solid history of standing against discrimination. As early as 1943, it elected Lena Horne and Rex Ingram to its board of directors. It was the first industry union to include minority-hiring requirements in its contracts, and it created what ultimately became the Ethnic Employment Opportunities Committee.

Conspicuously absent in the current discussions with the TV networks is the flip side of prime-time segregation. Half-hour sitcoms have degenerated into insular, racially segregated shows preoccupied with the foibles of cardboard characters. In general, they have divided into all-white casts on the major networks, all-black casts on the smaller ones. While the diversity coalition focused on the white sitcom world, unfortunately, many black sitcoms--”The Parkers” and “The Wayans Brothers,” for example, on the UPN and WB networks--escaped scrutiny for their display of what in the past was condemned as “mammyism,” shorthand for widespread black stereotypes in American popular culture.

NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume has said that he plans additional deals with these networks and the companies that produce their shows. But if he ignores the reemergence of ludicrous stereotypes on some of the black-cast programs, he will have abdicated the crucial role played by the civil rights movement in demanding not only jobs but also standards in U.S. entertainment.

Forty years ago, the civil rights movement fostered new opportunities and standards in television. In 1962, members of the Los Angeles NAACP agreed that a concerted effort was needed to fight discrimination in the industry, and the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch was chartered. Television was a major target. The results of these efforts were unprecedented. Talent such as Diahann Carroll, Ivan Dixon, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands and James Earl Jones were nominated for Emmys. By 1977, TV’s first miniseries, “Roots,” unexpectedly buried decades of racial shibboleths overnight and attracted the largest audiences in TV history.

The NAACP’s willingness to take on the problem of stereotypical roles, and the willingness of African American actors to play them, often placed the New York headquarters and sympathetic locals at loggerheads with some black entertainers. The most bitter rift was between NAACP Executive Secretary Walter F. White and some members of the black Hollywood colony in the 1930s and 1940s over “mammyism” in the movies. When questioned about playing such stereotypes, comic Willie Best spoke for others when he told a newspaper interviewer, “What’s an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out.”

The quintessential mammy, Hattie McDaniel, and actors Clarence Muse, Louise Beavers and Lincoln T. Perry, who played Stepin Fetchit, professionally defied the NAACP. But the civil rights movement was central to their personal lives. After becoming the first African American to win an Oscar for her controversial supporting role in “Gone With the Wind,” McDaniel and about 30 other black residents in the affluent West Adams Heights neighborhood called Sugar Hill were sued by white neighbors who wanted the courts to enforce the racially restrictive housing covenants on the deeds of the stars’ mansions. The black homeowners prevailed, and the 1946 case influenced a later Supreme Court decision overturning the enforceability of housing covenants. As a final insult, however, McDaniel’s wish to be buried, as were other celebrities, in Hollywood Memorial Park was denied because of its whites-only policy. In 1952, she was interred in the Rosedale Cemetery at Washington and Normandie. Last October, the new operators of Hollywood Memorial Park dedicated a monument to her on the 47th anniversary of her death.

In “Ebony Images: Black Americans and Television,” Richard Koiner writes that “Blacks have been restricted not only by a scarcity of roles but also by stereotyped parts.” But the struggle against white domination, as well as black mediocrity, involves much more. Perhaps Mfume can honor this struggle by using some of his organization’s lavish budget for its annual Image Awards to support a project, in conjunction with UCLA’s Oral History Program, to preserve the history of black Hollywood. The first interviews with pioneers who made the current diversity agreements possible could be arranged with actor Herb Jeffries, the Bronze Buckaroo; Lillian Cumber, the first African American Hollywood agent; Maggie Hathaway, former stand-in for Horne and first president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood NAACP; Fayard Nicholas of the Nicolas Brothers dance team; and Beah Richards, film star.

The NAACP may also want to consider resurrecting a practice originated by the Beverly Hills-Hollywood NAACP, whose early Image Awards packed a double punch. Not only did they honor African Americans who were overlooked by the industry, they also lampooned racial exclusion. During one ceremony, comedian Bob Hope was presented in absentia with the Onion Award--a bunch of scallions--for his all-white USO shows. After the negative publicity, Hope began featuring black performers in his tours. A new Onion Award could target those of any race whose work disparages the long battle for excellence and inclusion in the media.