Diversity, Shmeversity

It's pretty much like clockwork. You can always tell how the day's going by the number of blog posts I get up to. I have diligently sat here since 9:01 a.m. struggling to get into this half hour pilot I'm trying to write. Eight hours with breaks and I have about nine or ten of the hardest-fought pages ever. Painful. But I am not moving til 6:30. If my usual holds, I'll get another five pages written between 5:30 and 6:30 pm when I knock off, begging the question, "what the hell is wrong with you?"

Alex over at Complications Ensue made a post about doing a "diversity pass" and got taken out to the woodshed by some of his commenters. You can check out the whole ugly contretemps here.

I have some sympathy for Alex's dilemna. One of my favorite things about Grey's Anatomy is the fact that the Black leads and the Asian leads are people, and not plugged-in for racially tinged stories, except when it confounds your pointy-head PC expectations, like when Sandra Oh's Christina Yang revealed to her beau, Dr. Burke, that she was Jewish. I clapped my hands like a seven-year-old girl trying to keep Tinkerbell from dying. (little Durang reference for you theater-philes out there.) To my recollection, Grey's has yet to do a racially-based story. And Hallelujah for that. Gee, wonder if that has to do with the fact that the creator is a black woman? Maybe if we get some more diversity in the boardrooms of the networks buying these shows, and in the creator and showrunner's offices, and the problem will solve itself.

But I doubt it.

We'll still have to suffer through the Female Black Judge and the Magic Black Person (which, granted, is more prevalent in the Film division, but still...) There's also the One Black Friend of all the White People, and the Single Asian Cheerleader, and the Good Looking Blond Mugger, (which I think someone over on Complications Ensue mentioned.)

For my part, I've struggled mightily in one of my pilots to have a dumb female Asian character (who was Jewish and Texan, to boot) and the network reaction was basically...well...let's be diplomatic and say, "questioning."

The thing is, as retarded as it sounds, (And yes, I said "retarded." I'm reclaiming the word,) there are only so many combinations available to you. I wanted the dumb Asian female character partly to show our hyphenated society, and partly because, damnit, I have met a lot of dumb Asian women in my time. And why not confound expectations?)

I wanted her to have big ol' Texas hair and a southern drawl because, damnit, that would just be funny. And I've met Asian girls with southern accents. And it's dead sexy, hoss.

But at the same time, how do you go to the network with another black criminal? If you have a black character who's dumb, what does that do to your show? What's the reaction going to be? And do you want that reaction to overshadow the material? Maybe people aren't comfortable talking about it, but these things are at issue. To say that they're not is hopelessly naive.

There is a female Canadian journalist who was one of Canada's most respected newswomen. She's interviewed Prime Ministers and Presidents and Nobel Prize winners. She co-anchored the National Newscast on the CBC for a time. She's now the Canadian Consul General in New York. But the thing that I've never been able to forget is how a top Canadian network exec told me that the only thing this woman did in her journalism career that got a consistent, passionate response from viewers was change her hair.

Seriously. Every haircut, hundreds of calls.

Do you think writers go through these hoops because we're the crazy ones? Sometimes. But that doesn't make the issue any less worthy of consideration.

Invent the colorblind, totally racial-consideration free society, and most writers I know will be right there with you. But until then, just because race isn't something that we ever talk about doesn't mean that we don't have to talk about it.

And for the record, my favorite Diversity Pass EVER was a Canadian show made by the same company that does DeGrassi. It aired about ten years ago.

The character was....drumroll, please....

a gay
native
bicycle courier

I think he had a learning disability, too.

Awesome.