Aziz Ansari, Kerry Washington: 'Every Industry is So White'
"I saw this chart in The New York Times about, like, decision makers and it was, like, all white people."
5.27.2016
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"Everything is so white," according to actress/activist Kerry Washington and comedian Aziz Ansari.
In a clip previewing the upcoming episode for PBS SoCal's Variety Studio: Actors on Actors series, Kerry Washington and Aziz Ansari discussed diversity in Hollywood as well as other industries, concluding that "everything is so white."
"I feel like everybody's talked so much about how there's more diversity on TV than in film. I don't understand why," Washington, star of ABC's Scandal, asked Ansari. "Do you?"
"I don't know," Ansari, star of Master of None, replied. "If I had to guess, I feel like there's more diverse creators."
Mentioning how Masters of None features a cast of Indian and Asian people, Ansari said: "We have a diverse group of friends and we didn't even really think about it when we were making the show, that 'Oh, this is diverse.' We were just like, 'This feels real.'"
Much of the discussion focused on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy earlier this year when progressives threw a fit when none of the acting categories featured persons of color, even though Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu was nominated (and won) an Oscar for The Revenant.
Ansari then shifted the conversation onto industries beyond Hollywood, echoing the words of Al Sharpton that, like the Rocky Mountains, "the higher up it goes, the whiter it looks."
"I saw this chart in The New York Times about, like, decision makers – the gatekeepers in every single industry – and it was like all white people," Ansari said.
Kerry Washington, no stranger to progressive activism, concurred.
"It came out after 'Oscars So White' and I loved that they did it because there was all this attention on Hollywood, but it was like no, no, no, every industry is so white," Washington said.
Actress Kerry Washington has been an outspoken advocate of abortion, appearing in multiple PSA's and even agreeing to an episode of Scandal in which her character underwent an abortion while "Silent Night" played on the soundtrack.
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