Should Television Be More Diversity Essay

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Do you feel that television should be more diverse? TV needs to be more diverse because it makes society uncomfortable that not all races are portrayed on TV. There 's more races in this country other than White and it needs to be reflected on TV. Television was introduced in 1928 and has always been predominantly white (Stephens, 2016). Since the 1920 's, there has been an increase in the amounts of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians as well as Hindu 's in the country so television should reflect this amount of races as opposed to mainly Whites. The United States is predominantly White but the amount of African Americans in the country is coming close to the amount of Whites and should be reflected on something we engage in everyday. Moreover, …show more content…
Networks like BET usually consists of mainly Black actors and actresses whereas Lifetime usually consists of Whites. One network that has diversity is the Disney Channel Network. Disney Channel has always had a diverse cast of characters, actors, and actresses. A show called Jessie reflects diversity on the show by them incorporating an African American actress and an Indian actor into a wealthy White family. This is a smart decision because the younger generation will grow up to be more open to accept cultural diversity. The news stations also do a great job of incorporating diverse reporters and tend to have a reporter of each race. In an article by Amit Gupta, he describes what he found on the growing use of Indian Americans on television today. Gupta feels that the increase of Indian Americans on television is because of the large amount of Indian Americans in America as well as the importance of Indian Americans in history and how much they have contributed to America. Gupta also states that previously, Indian Americans have been given roles on television that doesn 't portray the reality of an Indian American and now television networks are working on having more Indian Americans on television that act in roles that portray their reality (Gupta, 2016). The use of Indian Americans on television contributes to the diversity that is needed on …show more content…
In an article by Ann Hollifield, she states some of the possible reasons why there aren 't a lot of minorities in the acting workplace which could lead to why there isn 't a lot of diversity on television. The diversity declines in large television markets has been argued that minorities have to face a "glass ceiling" which makes it more difficult for minorities to move up in the industries. It was also said that another factor this entails is the size of the organization and how many minorities they are actually able to hire (Hollifield, 2016). Moreover, I don 't feel that it is entirely the networks fault because some networks might actually want to incorporate diversity into their television shows but may not have the available actors and actresses for the part. The New York Times did a questionnaire for students to see their view on television being too White. Some students felt that diversity didn 't have anything to do with television whereas some felt it did (Ojalvo,

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