FAQ 56 - Proportional Representation

Mekki El-Boushi
April, 1995

(draft) Liberal activists howl when white people are statistically overrepresented in any considered "preferred" group - but these same whiners are peculiarly silent when blacks are overrepresented in the entertainment industry or the sports industry, never insisting that Whites, Hispanics, and Asians have "proportional representation".

Entertainment and sports industries represent steady employment for an incredibly small handful of Americans. No white liberals are crying fowl about the overrepresentation of whites in tennis, golf, volleyball, hockey, etc and you know why? because proportional representation as an athlete in the sports industry doesn't mean a damn thing in terms of achieving real equality or equity in this country. On the other hand blacks and women and other non-white groups are severely underrepresented in terms of management and ownership in all the sport industries.

Entertainment is different than sports because beyond the low level of employment of any group in terms of on-screen representation this industry shapes our perceptions of important people and events. Black people are severely underrepresented in terms of on-screen dramatic roles the vast majority of television roles for blacks are and have been in situation comedies where we can continue in our non-threatening (to whites) and non-enlightening roles as minstrels. We see dramatic roles lately for blacks in movies because blacks are starting to get the opportunity to make our own movies. Behind the scenes blacks are severely underrepresented in all facets of the news and entertainment industries-- that is, at all levels where we could contribute to where there are a lot more jobs (see MacDonald 1983, etc).

People like this like to talk as if we live in a social vacuum. The thing they fail to understand -- quite ironically is that we are concerned with the underrepresentation of blacks (and women, etc) because we know that these groups have been and are currently being oppressed and discriminated against. When I say discriminated against I don't mean the occasional slight, but centuries of systematic CUMMULATIVE oppression and discrimination. Likewise there is quite a bit less concern for the underrepresentation of white males because every act of discrimination and oppression faced by the female and the non-white over the past few CENTURIES has amounted to systematic CUMMULATIVE privileging of whites in general and especially middle and upper class white males. i.e. for every black man or women who did not get the job or was not even allowed to hold a job that placed them in a position of authority over whites, some white person GOT THAT JOB-- and before you even try to say such racist conventions are all in the past let me tell you that job discrimination is alive and well today (which has been documented in controlled lab experiments by academicians, in quasi-experiments by the government, and even by news magazines like prime-time that let Americans see first hand that an equally qualified black person is FAR less likely to get the same job as his or her white counterpart).

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