With the recent 
news that BET is about to be confronted with a competitor African-American-centric TV network, it got me thinking –not about the questions so many others have pondered, from the financial feasibility of the new Bounce TV to what BET’s response will be. No, it got me thinking about what the emergence of another minority-centric entertainment network means for television as a whole.
Has television actually moved backward instead of forward when it comes to segregating TV shows?
At first glance, it would seem that the emergence of Bounce supports the idea that the television landscape is more segregated than ever. After all, if television was truly diverse, we wouldn’t need specialty channels catering to specific ethnic groups –the very existence of BET and Bounce make the argument that these communities are not being served by mainstream TV.
Unfortunately, the answer is more complicated than that.
As a whole, we’ve actually moved forward in desegregating television –but at the expense of minorities.
Let me explain.
As a kid of the ‘90s, I was raised on a diet of all-black network TV sitcoms: Family Matters, The Cosby Show, Hanging With Mr. Cooper, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, A Different World, Martin, Sister Sister, and many more. Shows with all African-American casts were in the spotlight from TGIF to the new fledgling Fox TV network.
Yet when it came to sitcoms whose premises did NOT revolve around black families, the black casting dried up. Family Matters may have been a highly-rated show in its time-slot, but just wait 30 minutes and Step By Step or Full House would take its place: an all-white cast living in an all-white world. And shows like Friends, which took place in cities that were predominantly black, notoriously only showed minorities as wait staff.
In recent years, however, this trend towards segregated shows has reversed. From My Name is Earl to Glee to the various CSIs and Law and Orders to Hawaii Five-O and Nikita, modern TV shows regularly have black and minority actors as prominent cast members. Even shows like Parks And Recreation, which takes place in the ostensibly white Midwest, boasts Aziz Ansari and Rashida Jones as main characters. More heartening is the fact that none of these shows base the character’s personality off their ethnicity. 
Park and Rec’s Tom Haverford is a smooth-talking wannabe rapper, not a cab driver with a thick Indian accent. 30 Rock’s Tracy Jordan is insane because he’s a celebrity, not because he’s black. Community’s Troy and Abed are geeks; Michael just wants to get his son off the Lost Island; Archer’s Lana is a brilliant and frankly overqualified ISIS spy. More than ever before, TV shows are reflecting the true ethnic makeup of our nation.
Here comes the “But.”
BUT, while these desegregated shows might boast black supporting characters, the protagonists are still always white. 30 Rock, The Closer, The New Adventures of old Christine, Dexter, Raising Hope, Chuck, House, Smallville, and many other shows with desegregated casts all have white people as the main characters. And no matter how laudably diverse the casting is among critically-acclaimed dramas and comedies, we need to measure progress by what people are actually watching –and what they are watching is still all-white. CBS rules the air with Two and a Half Men and Big Bang Theory, shows that have no minorities whatsoever, aside from the hyper-stereotypical Rajesh Koothrappali in Big Bang Theory.
In fact, all we’ve done is trade our casting problems. More shows are desegregated, yet the majority of TV is still made for a white audience, AND we’ve drastically cut the number of scripted TV shows that feature minority protagonists. You can list on one hand the number of non-BET shows in the past five years that star a black man –and don’t get me started on the lack of starring roles for black women. Outside of Tyler Perry and The Cleveland Show, pickings are slim. Undercovers, one of the few shows to feature black protagonists and a diverse cast, failed after only a handful of episodes. Even BET has been lax in developing new shows with black casts, depending primarily on syndicated reruns and reality shows.
Ultimately, I argue that we as an industry have moved forward in desegregating TV shows –but did so by completely wiping out the African-American protagonist. As a media-consuming culture we still have trouble swallowing black characters as anything other than secondary players in white dramas and comedies. We’ve taken big steps forward in desegregating TV; we’ve taken giant steps back by refusing to portray those black characters as equal to whites.
