We Need TV Shows That Look Like Us

My fiance and I are a lot alike. We share a love of political debate, Scrabble, Sunday morning jazz and a million other things. In fact, our relationship has dissolved the cynical and jaded notions of marriage that we--like most Generation Xers--held dear. But according to TV, we don’t exist.

You see, our story doesn’t match the cultural mirror. While my significant other fended for himself amid the concrete playgrounds of Brooklyn, N.Y., I was growing up in leafy suburbia, the product of upper-middle-class Virginia.

He is black. I am white.

True, our childhood environments didn’t present opportunities for people like us to become friends. But it certainly didn’t help that, beyond our “Sesame Street” years, the TV world of the 1980s portrayed few examples of colorblind friendship. Sadly, 20 years later, little has changed.

Recently, Children Now, an Oakland-based media and child advocacy organization, released its annual study of racial diversity on prime-time TV. According to the study, 75% of the TV characters in prime time are white, 17% African American, 3% Asian-Pacific Islander, 2% Latino and 0.2% Native American.

For the millions of Americans who tune in on an average evening, this monochromatic TV picture probably isn’t surprising. There was a slight improvement, however, from the year before, when the study showed that 80% of prime-time characters were white. Dig deeper and a more troublesome finding emerges: Less than one-third of all programs have racially diverse lead characters. And 40% of all prime-time programs have primary casts that are either all white or all black.

What does this teach our youth?

Regardless of social class or race, children learn “appropriate” cultural norms through television and films. And without recurring examples of interracial friendship, interaction and romance, the message is loud and clear: Stick to your own kind. For a nation with a burgeoning population of racial and ethnic minorities, not only is this picture sad, it’s unrealistic.

In a 1998 survey of 10-to 17-year-olds chosen from the four largest racial groups, three-fourths said that they have “best friends” of different races and wished that TV programs would reflect this. One, a Latina teen, said: “I think the perfect show for me would be [one] that had every race. Not a show with only African Americans or only Latino people.” She wanted a show that would “fit everybody.”

With a growing number of TV channels to choose from, perhaps more shows that “fit everybody” will eventually end up on the viewing menu. But with a steady increase of one-race niche programming, perhaps not.

As for my fiance and me, our racial difference is not a burdensome factor that defines our relationship, as is often the case in TV stereotypes of biracial couples and friendships. We don’t even think about it daily, which may be partially attributed to Los Angeles and its rich tapestry of multicultural life.

We’re proud that the children we may have someday will check “mixed race” on their college applications and U.S. census forms. Their dad and I will encourage them to befriend and love people of various shades of black, brown, tan and white. And perhaps TV will one day help us show them that it’s OK.