I Have Nothing Against Whites
August 1999
Each year, the museum where I am employed hosts a meeting
to premiere the new network television series.
This year was similar to every year; lot's of fresh faces,
lots of families living in suburbia, lots of lawyers and doctors and all that, but as I
walked past the rows of large photos depicting the fall lineup, I couldn't help but notice
that something was missing. There was not one single minority in any of these photos. I
was shocked. I went up to someone standing by one of the photos and asked if these were
all the new shows. They nodded yes. I said, "but they're all white people." The
person hadn't even noticed.
Let me tell you, I am a white female in my early thirties.
I have nothing against whites, but I do have something against the fact that none of those
shows reflect the life I and many other people in modern America live. There are people
actually living out there in this great country who aren't white. I know. I have seen
them. They are my friends, my college buddies, my neighbors. They work as lawyers,
doctors, teachers, and there are a lot of them! There are Asian Americans, African
Americans, Latinos out there, but you would never know by turning on ABC on a Saturday
night.
The thing that saddens me more than the lack of minority
representation on major networks is the fact that I seemed to be the only one at the
museum who even noticed the void. I couldn't help but think how embarrassed I would be to
represent one of these networks.
These indeed are ignorant times, made more ignorant by the
powers running our nation's most powerful television networks. A few weeks ago, a racist
man admittedly gunned down a Filipino-American postal worker. He was killed because he was
not white. Racism still exists. You can see it on the news - right after the racism that
exists in network programming.
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