There has been controversy lately about NBC’s Saturday Night Live cast. The controversy is not swirling around the content of the show but rather the color of the cast.
SNL had not hired a black female in six years until a few days ago. Sasheer Zamata was hired onto the cast in the middle of the season seemingly due to public complaint that there was not a black woman on the cast. The public were saying things such as “The SNL producers are racist,” but isn’t it more racist that it was even an issue?
We are all the same on the inside. Skin color means nothing (or it should mean nothing), so why was adding a person with darker color skin such a big deal? We have come so far as a society with equality among all people, and frankly I think the firestorm that SNL received is a step in the wrong direction.
Do they want a certain number of people with blue eyes? Brown hair? I don’t understand the controversial difference between eye color and skin color. If we keep making it a thing then it is going to continue being a thing. To me, it’s more racist to think there is a problem with not having a black female on the show than it is to just let it be.
Though it may be more convenient for the writers to create jokes tailored to aid in the portrayal of an African-American character by adding an African-American woman, it simply doesn’t seem like this should be an issue within our society. There have been several times within the show’s history that the cast has portrayed a character that was a homosexual, yet there has never actually been a homosexual within the cast. I don’t hear any gay right’s activist making a complaint about that. Instead, they challenge real issues within the minority, such as the natural rights the community are given as American citizens that have been so easily taken away.
This is nothing against Zamata. I am happy for her, and I am excited to see her on the show. But I’m not excited because she is African-American. I am excited because she is funny. Diversity is great, of course, but I don’t think it should be forced. To me, forcing diversity defeats the purpose of diversity.
I think we can all agree that the producers of SNL were not deliberately avoiding hiring an African-American woman. Does it really seem like such a foreign concept to hire someone on a comedy show simply because she is funny, rather than because she would fulfill a diversity quota? Our society has been raised to believe that person should be hired based on aptitude rather than his or her cultural background or ethnicity, and SNL should be of no exception.
It is racist to separate this new cast member from the rest because she is the “new African-American female.” She should simply be the “new cast member.” If she was white we wouldn’t say she was the “new white female,” would we?