Thing I Don't Like: Why Are There No People of Color on "Saturday Night Live"?
Damn straight.
I’ve noticed this, too. It seems incredibly whiteysomething (that’s my new slang word for young white urban thirty/fortysomething) these days, and since the loss of Fey and Poehler, incredibly male. The highs of SNL have been higher in the last few years, with more memorable skits than I can recall happening in quite a while. They’ve even managed to string together a few episodes with more than one or two good skits (Jon Hamm, Paul Rudd).
But just like in the late 80s, a lot of the skits are starting to feel the same. It’s like they’re living in a bubble. It’s always been an NYC bubble. But now it feels like the Upright Citizens Brigade bubble.
But I will one-up the linked blog post (reblogged from kittykittybangbang) and say that what SNL needs are WRITERS of color. By this, I just mean non-white, having some perspectives from outside the bubble. (And Canadian does not count as a minority.) I think it’s circular — find writers that work well with your cast, and find castmembers that work well with your writing staff.
I’m guessing that the 30 Rock portrayal of the writers is a pretty good approximation, but I decided to see what Google could tell me. I started with the 2008 writers list, which I found here and here.
I then used IMDB, Google image search, Facebook public profiles, and other tools of creepy amateur intertron stalking to put together the following half-assed probably-wrong breakdown of the writers:
Doug Abeles - male whiteysomething
James Anderson - male whiteysomething
Alex Baze - male whiteysomething
Jessica Conrad - female whiteysomething (suspected)
Jim Downey - old male whiteysomething
Steve Higgins - male whiteysomething
Colin Jost - male whiteysomething
Erik Kenward - male whiteysomething
Rob Klein - male whiteysomething (suspected)
John Lutz - male whiteysomething
Seth Meyers - male whiteysomething
John Mulaney - male whiteysomething
Paula Pell - female whiteysomething
Simon Rich - male whiteysomething
Marika Sawyer - female ?
Akiva Schaffer - male whiteysomething
John Solomon - male whiteysomething
Emily Spivey - female whiteysomething
Kent Sublette - male whiteysomething
Jorma Taccone - male whiteysomething
Bryan Tucker - male whiteysomething
So, with the caveat that these results depend heavily on unreliable internet stalking, sometimes involving singular grainy images shot from moving helicopters, I was not able to find a single writer of color. I count 18 “verified” whiteysomethings, two suspected via itsy-bitsy thumbnails (creepy!), and one unknown because her Facebook avatar is an obese cat. Furthermore, of the 21, only four are women.
I expected male whiteysomethingness, but not quite this much of it. There’s as much diversity here as if you lined up all the boy bands side by side. Even a burger joint sells french fries, for chrissakes.
As a male whiteysomething, I am proud to say that we have not yet ceded control. As someone who’d like to see more than just my voice represented, however, I’m disappointed.
Source: kittykittybangbang
