Invisible Minority?

According to Screen Actors Guild President Ken Howard, there isn’t enough ethnic diversity among the onscreen faces.

No surprise there, at least not for me — seeing as how I’m one of those underrepresented.

Dave McNary of Variety provided an interesting report on this topic:

The latest statistics … showed minority performers reached a high mark in 2007, with 29.3% of total roles, and then declined last year to 27.5%.

The breakdown of film and TV roles for 2008 was 72.5% Caucasian, 13.3% African-American, 6.4% Latino-Hispanic, 3.8 Asian-Pacific Islander, 0.3% Native American and 3.8% other-unknown.

SAG noted in its report that U.S. Census data from 2000 showed that the nation’s population was 73.4% Caucasian, 11.5% African-American, 10.6% Latino-Hispanic, 3.7% Asian-Pacific Islander and 0.8% Native American.

Howard said, “We will continue to work with producers, hiring executives and industry professionals in accurately portraying the American scene by ensuring equal access to employment opportunities for all of our members.”

Will this SAG report change anything? Probably not. But it’s food for thought for Asian stunt guys like me.

For the complete article, click here.