Diversity in Entertainment Becoming More Mainstream

The minority report of entertainment today is starting to look up. With success from shows such as Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy, it finally appears that diversity's gone ... well ... almost mainstream.

This year, UCLA did a study titled, "Hollywood's Race/Ethnicity and Gender-Based Casting: Prospects For A Title VII Lawsuit" that studied casting breakdowns posted on Breakdown Services, the entertainment industry's primary source for casting, for a period of three months last year.

According to the study, as reported in Backstage.com back in January, most (94%) of breakdowns specified gender. Nearly 50% of roles did not specify race, but the role was understood to be for a Caucasian. The study, according to Backstage.com, claimed that the "total percentage of roles reserved for white actors" was nearly 69%, forcing minority actors to collectively compete for the roughly 8.5% of roles open to all ethnicities. (For specifics related to this study view the following links: Backstage and UCLA Study)

Those statistics make life as a minority actor look horrendously dire, as if life as an actor isn't already dire enough. However, casting directors have found the study, done by Russell Robinson, professor of law at UCLA, to be frustrating. With stacks and stacks of headshots piling up within days of a breakdown posting and hundreds of photos to scroll through on electronic submissions, a casting director's job is never easy.