Bean Counting

In The New York Times:

Casting statistics on sex, age and race released by the Screen Actors Guild on Friday showed that the number of minority performers hired for film and television roles declined in 2008 from the previous year. According to the report, the number of jobs for nonwhite actors dropped to 27.5 percent of total roles cast in 2008 from a high of 29.3 percent in 2007. While African-Americans made up the largest number of minorities cast, they also lost the most ground, securing 14.8 percent of all roles in 2007 but 13.3 percent in 2008. American Indians had the fewest jobs, 0.3 percent in both years. The data were based on information collected by producers under guild contracts. “The diverse and multicultural world we live in today is still not accurately reflected in the portrayals we see on the screen,” the group’s national president, Ken Howard, said in a statement.

1) The job of people who make films and TV shows is not to accurately reflect the entire world we live in, but to create entertainment and/or art. There are a lot more doctors, lawyers and cops on TV than there are in the real world. Should people in construction complain?

2) The general ethnic makeup of those who get paid to act concerns me about as much as the general ethnic makeup of those who get paid to play jazz or sports.

3) African-American are less than 13% of the population, so for all those who watch these numbers closely, it appears they're overrepresented. (SAG doesn't seem to keep records on Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Irish-Americans and many others, so I can't tell how much every single ethnic group is over or underrepresented.)