Oakland Civil Rights Group Turns Up Heat On 'SNL' Over Lack of Diversity

There was a bit of a stir this weekend when The Hollywood Reporter posted a letter from Rashad Robinson, executive director of Oakland-based ColorOfChange.org, to Lorne Michaels, the eternal uber-honcho of Saturday Night Live. The letter expressed dismay at African-American SNL cast member Kenan Thompson's recent comments to TV Guide about the show's perpetual lack of black comediennes.

"It's just a tough part of the business," Thompson said. "Like in auditions, they just never find ones that are ready."

That comment made headlines and did not go over well, naturally, with black comediennes.

Robinson's letter to Michaels also criticized the show for its depiction of black women. Excerpt:

In the 39-year history of SNL, just three Black women have joined the show's repertory cast. The first, Danitra Vance, was hired after the show had already been on air for a decade, and quit after a short period because she was only given tired roles written expressly to demean and dismiss Black women, including baby mamas, maids and women with a bad attitude. That was 1986 — when I was in elementary school — and it seems little has changed over the course of my lifetime.

Since Maya Rudolph's departure in 2007, SNL has failed to cast even one Black woman — yet still manages to traffic in dehumanizing portrayals that make race and gender the butt of the joke. Whether it's Kenan Thompson in drag as the crass, sexually aggressive "Virginiaca," or white cast member Cecily Strong voicing "Verquonica" — a "large, non-functional" (i.e. overweight and lazy), unmistakably "Black" Starbucks coffee machine — SNL seems committed to aggressively continuing to push images of Black women as incompetent, rude, hypersexual and financially dependent. Frankly, we're tired of this disrespect.

After that letter was made public, Lorne Michaels talked to the Associated Press about the issue. "It's not like it's not a priority for us," he said about the paucity of black women. "It will happen. I'm sure it will happen."

Diversity on the show has been a hot topic since six new cast members, five white men and one white woman, were announced in September. (Since then, cast member Jay Pharaoh has publicly stated he is pushing for a black woman named Darmirra Brunson to join the show.)

On Saturday, SNL opened with this sketch featuring Jay Pharoah and guest host Kerry Washington, which addressed the issue head-on ...

I talked to ColorOfChange.org's Rashad Robinson today to see what he thought about what appeared to be the show's on-air response to this issue.

Here's an edited transcript of our interview:

Jon Brooks: What did you think of the opening sketch?

Rashad Robinson: I thought the opening sketch was funny, but at the end of the day it doesn’t change the fact that when the show went off air, Saturday Night Live went back to not having any black women in its cast.

This is not really funny; this is an opportunity now after all the jokes are done for Lorne Michaels and for the other producers to make a change in its casting and in the way that they continue to represent black folks, and black women in particular.

Brooks: Over the years a lot of groups been at upset at SNL at the way they’ve been portrayed. What do you say to those who say stereotypes are part and parcel of this show’s humor, and that they treat all groups equally disrespectfully?

Robinson: A show that doesn’t hire certain groups yet depicts them doesn’t actually treat them equally. When you’re not at the table you’re on the menu. While black folks can be the butt of the joke at SNL, they’re not allowed to be in on the joke, because we’re not represented in the writers pool and, for black women, not represented in the cast.

The question here is not can the community laugh at itself, the question here is about a show like SNL, which has created such a pipeline for other opportunity, from Tina Fey to Conan O'Brien to Jimmy Fallon to so many folks who have moved through it over the years — when the door is closed, when the opportunity is limited in a place like this, it creates real impact downstream.

When Kenan Thompson came out and said the reason why there were no black women added to the cast is that black women simply weren't ready for the show, it underscored this ongoing idea that somehow when diversity isn’t present, when people of color aren’t at the table, that somehow it is their own fault. After 39 years of this show being on the air and only three black women being part of the cast, this is not a question about a certain group of people, this is a question of the producers and their priorities.

Brooks: It seems like there’s been even less representation of Latinos and Asians ...

Robinson: Absolutely. SNL's diversity problems don’t stop with its representation of black folks. As we continue the discussion and as we work with our friends and allies in the Asian Pacific Islander and Latino communities, we are obviously open to having a broader discussion around diversity and not only talking about the ongoing pipeline challenges for black actors and comedians but the lack of diversity as a whole.