A March 14 Media Matters story entitled How Chris Hayes’ Show Differs From Other Sunday Shows In One Chart offered this info-graphic to support their contention that Hayes’ weekend TV political magazine, Up, “has provided much-needed diversity“ of race and gender to television political programs.

Now, I’m not trying to minimize the accomplishment indicated by the graph. In fact, some of those “diverse” people who appear on Up are friends of mine. But uncritically trumpeting these numbers is indicative of a problem with the media and how it addresses race that even shows like Up are often guilty of. Here’s what I mean.

The “diversity” Media Matters lauds is far from robust. For one thing, the people of color represented in this graph are, in the vast majority, black. That’s not a problem in and of itself until you consider how those who are not black are represented on Up.

ChangeLab pulled the transcripts of seven weekend political programs televised between January 1-June 30 of last year. The shows included Face the Nation, Meet the Press, State of the Union, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Fox News Sunday, Up with Chris Hayes, and Melissa Harris-Perry.* Over this six-month period, these seven programs aired 169 episodes.

In those 169 episodes, Native Americans were never mentioned at all. They weren’t just left off guest lists. Words to describe them were never used. Now you might argue that the way these shows define “politics” is at issue here, and not a conscious bias against Native Americans, but the impact is the same. By leaving Native Americans off the agenda, we contribute to one of the most insidious means of conquest of Native America – making Native Americans disappear. We make native people disappear in many ways, not least by imposing blood quantum restrictions that lead to tribal termination, and by treating native people and their issues as if they are irrelevant to contemporary (non-native) American life.

This disappearing act was as evident on Up as on every other Sunday show, making Media Matters’ “diversity” virtually meaningless to Native Americans.

For Hemsley, George Jefferson meant navigating his need to sustain his career and the needs of the character, with some respect for the actresses and actors, who before him, had no such options. Hemsley was a product of the famed Negro Ensemble Company (NEC), founded by playwright Douglas Turner Ward, actor Robert Hooks, and theater manager Gerald Krone and was the training ground for generations of Black actresses and actors including Esther Rolle, John Amos and Janet DuBois, all of Lear’s Good Times, ​plus Roxie Roker, Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and contemporary actors and actresses like Denzel Washington, David Alan Grier, Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett.
The early generations of NEC were faced with many of the same challenges that Hemsley faced: how to cultivate the humanity of Black characters that were never intended—intentionally or unintentionally—to be fully-fledged humans by the writers and producers that created them. In the case of those folk who worked on television sitcoms, they were further limited by the conventions of the format, which rarely lent itself to depth and nuance.

In this latter instance, actors and actresses like Sherman Hemsley and his television wife Isabel Sanford, were held to standards that their White peers never had to deal with. Hemsley, for example, possessed a gift for physical comedy—that was part of what the strut was about—that was comparable to that of figures like Dick Van Dyke (particularly on The Dick Van Dyke Show), Larry Hagman, during his day on I Dream of Jeannie, ​John Ritter and Don Knotts, whose Three’s Company often shared the top-10 spot in the Nielsen’s with The Jeffersons.

Whereas the aforementioned actors were sometimes seen as geniuses of the style, who never had the burden of representing for their race or ethnic group, too often Black comedians of that like, Bert Williams, Lincoln Perry (“Step n’ Fetchit), Hemsley and Jaleel White, are simply reduced in the Black imagination as simply acting like “coons.” A Black actor would have never been able to get away with the “bugged eyes” that were Knotts’ specialty, dating back to his days as Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show.

It’s important to note here that Rhimes directed her criticism at @abcfbunheads, the official Twitter for the ABC Family show. ABC Family is a subsidiary of Disney-ABC, which owns all of the shows Rhimes has developed, created, or had her name attached to since her TV career began. In reality, her tweet is less an attack on Sherman-Palladino than a calling-out of the network Rhimes has made richer. The people who resent the lack of diversity criticism directed at shows like Girls and Bunheads will be the first to tell you that the lack of diversity on TV is a systemic problem. Which is why Rhimes being called a woman-hater for pointing out that there isn’t even one non-white ballerina on Bunheads is such a fucked argument. Rhimes criticizing the lack of diversity on a show on her network in a public forum is her fighting that system, not her sowing the seeds of a bitchfight. She’s not embarrassing Sherman-Palladino; she’s embarrassing the system.

Last thing: the people who think criticizing a show’s lack of diversity equates to woman hate are the same ones who keep asking, Why don’t you haters go after shows run by men? Why don’t you go after shows like Entourage or Two-and-a-Half Men that only show the point-of-view of white men?

The answers are simple. First of all, there’s been plenty written about the lack of diversity on TV in general by the same people who’ve critiqued the lack of diversity on women-run shows like Girls and Bunheads. On this very blog. And this one. And this one, for starters.

Second, the shows that we’re often the most critical of are the ones we care about the most. You know, the shows we fancy to be for, by, and about us. Even when those shows turn out to seem not to care about us at all.

Scandal was renewed last week, and thank God, because their ex-CIA torture specialist needs at least two seasons to experience a full mental break, it’s going to take more than seven episodes for the president’s marriage to completely fall apart, and— wait, did someone just get stabbed in the back of the neck with a pair of scissors? The show has successfully combined the elements necessary for a semi-decent and well-received political drama: White House intrigue, lawyer, a broad ensemble cast, and the unabashed promotion of Democratic policies delivered via epic monologues that don’t actually reflect the way anyone speaks. Renewed, Kerry Washington automatically becomes the longest African-American female lead on network television since 1974.

None of that matters in Scandal’s DC though, where Washington’s Olivia Pope’s race has so far been a non-issue. Given her affair with the sitting (white) president it could very well have been an issue tackled by Shonda Rhimes (and still might be— the show is only six episodes in). Some reviewers question the fact that it hasn’t been mentioned, but it is ‘refreshing’ to be introduced to a leading black character in the modern world through the lense of their personality, profession, and actions rather than their race—you know, the way every other character on television is viewed. Furthermore, it’s proof for certain people that writing a character of color doesn’t need necessarily need to be any more complicated than writing a white one.

Scandal might not be the deepest or best written show on television right now, but it’s an entertaining distraction and certainly deserves more than seven episodes. Besides, after cancelling my other guilty pleasure, GCBs, ABC owes me one.