Where Have all the Brown People Gone?

This past week saw the series finale of the award winning television show, "Ugly Betty." With the end of this series, there are currently no live action programs on broadcast TV with a majority non-white cast. I say "live action" because the Fox animated program, "The Cleveland Show" is now the only television show on a broadcast network with more brown faces than white ones. However, the show's creators, main writers, as well as the voice of the main character, are all white people.

[Photo: "Ugly Betty" Star, America Ferrera and series Executive producer, Salma Hayek.]

As a child of the 80's and 90's, I feel like I was spoiled by all the television shows that had majority Black cast members. From the legendary "The Cosby Show" to "A Different World," if you were young and Black in the 80's and 90's, you saw plenty of images of yourself (positive ones!) on tv without ever having to touch BET (Black Entertainment Television). Back in those days, there were actually Black people on NBC. I already mentioned "Cosby" and "A Different World," but there were also long-running series like "227," "Amen," and "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" bringing in plenty of ratings for "the peacock network." And though there has been a little more "color" on NBC shows lately, as the 21st century was starting, much of the casts on NBC shows had very few non-white faces.

A few days ago, I was reminiscing about one of my favorite tv dramas during the 90's, "New York Undercover." This show was one-third of one of my favorite primetime lineups - every Thursday night on Fox, "Martin," "Living Single" and "New York Undercover." After I mentioned this on Facebook, I received several comments from my fellow FB'ers with the same fond memories. As I said then, Thursday night was my favorite night of the week because of these shows, particularly "New York Undercover." I have such great memories of those shows because they were so much a part of my teenage years. The characters were memorable and relatable, the writing was quality and the acting was good too.

Many shows with majority African American and/or Latino cast members have been very successful for many broadcast networks. In fact, networks like Fox, UPN, WB/CW, started their networks maximizing majority non-white tv shows, only to eliminate them once the network got its footing. We saw this recently with the CW cancelling shows like "Girlfriends," "Everybody Hates Chris" and "The Game" all within a year. Simultaneously, there has been so much energy dedicated by fans of "The Game" to bring the show back in some sort of format, even if on BET. I think this is because there are so few shows where non-white people can identify with the characters. "The Game" was a good show... I watched it. However, I have not seen this much fervor to bring a show back that, honestly, was fairly average. Granted, the plot lines were juicy and scandolous, but if there were other shows with comparable casting, I do not think folks would be as distraught of its cancellation.

I wonder if we have gotten so in love with the idea of "multicuturalism," that we think that diversity in Hollywood is acheived when we see a couple of non-white people in a show or movie. Yes, shows like "Grey's Anatomy," the CSI programs, "Heroes," "24" and "The Office," have very diverse casts. However, for every one of those shows, there are several shows with NO non-white characters. And for some reason we are supposed to be comfortable with that; having a majority Black cast or Latino cast in a couple of shows is apparently too much to ask for. In a country where there is a Black man as president with a Black family in the White House, where the majority of new births in America are Latino, we are supposed to be comfortable with numerous all-white casts on every broadcast network, with a few shows having a token brown face to "add some culture."

Well, here's to "The Cleveland Show"... I guess.