Essay 834

From nationwide news sources…

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‘The Class’ unbelievably white

BY DOUG ELFMAN, TELEVISION CRITIC

PASADENA, Calif. -- CBS is wheeling out a new sitcom in the fall called “The Class.” It stars eight actors. All of them are white. The show is entirely ivory, except that in the first episode, a white character has a white daughter named Oprah and an Asian-American daughter who has one word of dialogue. Nothing to be alarmed about, right?

Last week, a reporter asked the producers at a press conference, “Why aren’t there any people of color in this show set in 2006?”

“It is something that is unfortunate,” one of the two white co-creators said. “It happened because when we wrote the script, we wrote it color-blind.”

Color-blind? White’s not a color? Eight white hues blended together don’t create white bread?

This week, I relayed that “color-blind” story to Chris Rock -- narrator of his race-conscious comedy “Everybody Hates Chris” on UPN -- and he asked me if the show is supposed to be set in multicultural New York.

“If it’s in New York, then f--- ‘em,” Rock said.

Actually, “The Class” is set in multicultural Philadelphia, which is 46 percent white, 44 percent black and 8 percent Hispanic.

Come fall, Rock’s show and others with black leads will be piled together on Sunday nights on the new CW -- a merger of UPN and the WB -- and these shows will compete in a time slot against NBC’s new night of pro football.

In other words, most black-staffed shows on broadcast television belong only to one night on one network.

Pathetic.

But at a press conference on Monday, it was TV critics (a largely white group) who focused on this situation more than the black producers of the CW’s “Chris” (Rock and Ali LeRoi), “All of Us” (Jada Pinkett Smith), “Girlfriends” and “The Game” (Mara Brock Akil).

Indeed, Chicago-reared LeRoi suggests it’s not necessary for TV to air specifically “black” shows. He contends black people generally don’t dominate American cities, so they don’t have to lead TV shows, either. The ensemble casts of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Wire” and “Lost” are the best models of integration, he says.

“There are certain models out there where you just deal with this community of people, and you involve them in the program,” he says. In “Chris,” he says, “We have white characters on the show, black characters, we fold in some Asians and some Latinos. We just put them in there and we don’t make a big deal out of it.”

But that’s the point. “Chris” attempts to portray heritages of a microcosm in New York, whereas the makers of “The Class” chose to set that comedy in the big white city of ... Philadelphia?

LeRoi argues, from the perspective of a successful producer, that TV is “about making a good show for the audience that’s buying the product. Find your audience and sell them what you can sell them.”

He’s right that not every show has to be as diverse. And diversifying doesn’t guarantee a show will be good -- but neither does non-diversifying a show.

When white people are writing white shows for white TV executives who have white viewers in mind, that’s not America. That’s Disgustica. TV is art for the masses. If on the whole it’s not an echo of America, it is false art influencing pop culture, and many viewers would be justified in wondering why people who look like them can’t be leaders.

Away from the CW (which also has Tyra Banks fronting “America’s Next Top Model”), Dennis Haysbert is a co-lead in “The Unit,” and that’s about it for black leads on broadcast networks.

There’s a more glaring lack of Hispanic leads. There are 41 million Hispanic people in America. On the fall broadcasting schedule, there is one notable Hispanic-fronted show, “Ugly Betty,” produced for ABC by actress Salma Hayek.

Even the producers of “The Class” admitted their mistake in an awkward explanation. They spoke about how this white character was adopted by Korean parents, and how that character has a Hispanic boyfriend, la la la.

“If we had it to do over again,” creator David Crane said, “I think we would have approached the piece differently.”

Unfazed, Akil -- who is promoting “The Game” as a comedic and biting portrayal of football wives and their men -- looks at the CW’s night of black stars as an opportunity akin to when Bill Cosby “rebuilt the half-hour” on NBC, and when Fox (now fairly white) once forged a whole network around black actors.

“This,” she says, “is a night to prove that the other networks are making a mistake.”