SAG stats: Diversity lags - Entertainment News, Diversity in Hollywood, Media - Variety

SAG stats: Diversity lags

According to the SAG president, "The diverse and multicultural world we live in today is still not accurately reflected in the portrayals we see on the screen." That is essentially total bullshit. White people represent 73.4% of the population, but white actors get only 72.5% of screen roles.

If the SAG spokesman had spoken precisely, he would have noted that the country's GENDER composition is not accurately accurately reflected in the portrayals we see on the screen. Guys get 2/3 of the jobs, but are only 1/2 the population.

Relative to the general population, African-Americans are represented properly in films in general, with 13.3% of all (union) movie roles, compared to 11.5% of the population, but that is misleading because males take a disproportionately high percentage of roles. Therefore, it is fair to say that African-American males are significantly OVERrepresented - about 9% of movie roles for only 6% of the population - but black females are underrepresented - about 4.5% of movie roles for 6% of the populaton.

The overrepresentation of black males is also misleading. It's not stated in the article, but I assume that black males eceive a disproportionately percentage of movie work because they are often featured in crime films, which represent a highly significant percentage of the movies released in English. Ask yourself these questions: (1) What percentage of the actual population consists of criminals and criminal investigators? (2) What percentage of movie and TV roles represent these two classes? To word it another way, there are virtually no private eyes in real life, but everybody in movies is a private eye. The answers to those two questions will tell you why black males are overrepresented in films, and will also tell you that the overrepresentation is not necessarily a positive thing for black people.

Latinos are genuinely and significantly underrepresented across the board, and the females are perhaps the most underrepresented group. While latinos and latinas each represent about 5% of the population, they only represent about 4% and 2% of SAG film roles.