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Sophia Priest

Dr. Sarah Littlejohn

RCO-390

5 April 2020

Racial Inequalities Within the Entertainment Industry

You watch as the curtain opens to a stage filled with actors in costume. The costumes are

brilliantly detailed, as much care and consideration went into every stitch. The start of the first

song begins to play, with notes reverberating through the entire theatre. You can even feel it

within you. The theatre is cold even with your jacket on, but something else is at the forefront of

your mind. You, a person of color, originally auditioned for this play. You brought your best self

to that audition, and did not even see your name on the callback list. On the stage ahead of you,

you see a full cast of white men and women. You do not see a single person that looks like you,

and you wonder why it has to be this way.

This is a reality that is known too well not only by actors of color in the theatre industry,

but in the entertainment industry as a whole. Zarek Williams, a student at the University of North

Carolina at Greensboro, set out to research this concept and find out why there is still, in the year

2020, such a large gap of opportunities between white and non-white entertainers. According to

his analyses of interviews and books, as well as his own personal experiences as a black actor, he

found that the entertainment industry is very much dominated by white, cisgendered, and

heterosexual men, and that group is holding onto their traditional ways of navigating the field as

a whole. This particular group of people cannot move past casting non-white actors in roles that

enforce stereotypes, and most of the time, not even casting non-white actors at all. Though it is

likely due to the way that this group learned how to navigate the industry from their
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predecessors, this does not excuse it. The entertainment industry as a whole needs to embark on a

path of inclusivity and give opportunities to incredibly talented actors who have been shunned

because they are not white. Zarek’s audience is everyone that this research can possibly get to, as

this is a subject that a lot of people aren’t aware of. The more people who know about it, the

better.

Zarek is not only interested in the entertainment industry, but also plans to pursue a

career in it. He is a Drama major at UNCG and plans to have a career later on in life that is

involved with acting and the arts. With that being said, this topic of racial inequalities within the

entertainment industry came to Zarek very easily, as he is a black actor. All of this puts Zarek in

a really unique position for his research project, as he is his project. He is a black actor who has

been cast aside due to who he is, and that makes him the greatest expert for a project like this,

and also the perfect person to research this topic. Zarek also identifies himself as queer, making

it even harder for him to feel at home in this industry. Just as non-white actors are cast into roles

that endorse the stereotypes that are laid out for their race, queer actors are as well. Oftentimes, a

gay male is casted into a “sassy best friend” role, just like how a black male is often casted into a

“thug” role. Despite these difficulties, Zarek can and will overcome them. When speaking on

this, Zarek said, “Though I am a queer black male, and I am damn proud of being that, that is not

all I am.” Zarek is proud of who he is, and that is what will get him far in this field, despite all of

the obstacles that he may face along the way.

Conducting this research and having this project be on his mind for an entire semester

helped Zarek realize both some of his doubts concerning the project itself, and doubts within him

about himself and his industry as well. His ideas surrounding his project changed drastically as

well. Zarek knows that if he could do this project all over again, he would tackle it in a much
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different way. He would have organized his project in a more concise method of delivery instead

of tackling many different subjects at once. He also would have really enjoyed adding more

stories from people and their individual experiences with dealing with the inequalities of the

entertainment industry. Specifically, he would have loved to interview many different students

within UNCG’s theatre department to better understand how this issue was being dealt with at

his own university. With all of this being said, Zarek, at one point during this process, was

considering scrapping the idea entirely because he felt as if he was not doing the topic justice in a

way. He took some time to reflect, and came out of it with a stronger handle and idea of his

topic. Sometimes, we have to go through some doubt about the things we’re passionate about in

order to truly master it. Conducting this research also made Zarek deeply ruminate about how

getting a career in the future in this industry may be difficult for him, as both a queer and black

man. A quote from a friend, “Do you really think that you can get a role that is made for a white

person?” weighed heavily on his mind when conducting this research. Despite what that friend

and his doubts said, Zarek will do nothing but overcome each and every hurdle he runs into

during his career, just like he experienced during this project. It’s clear that there will be

obstacles in his path, but the rest of the path lies ahead of those obstacles, and he most definitely

will find a way to handle them and be a better person after going through it.

Though UNCG is an incredibly diverse school, and one of the most diverse universities

in the state of North Carolina, it still, within its own so-called entertainment industry, struggles to

have equal-access of opportunities to students of color when compared to white students. “From

being apart of UNCG’s drama department, I have seen a fair amount of these injustices, pushing

the black students into doing roles that are more stereotypical (which makes them

uncomfortable), or not casting little to any black students at all.” Zarek said in reference to this
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issue. Even though the demographics at our school would imply a very racially representative

cast in a play or musical, that is not what we see on the stage at UNCG. This has a dramatic

implication for both UNCG, and for universities as a whole. If UNCG can’t even have a diverse

cast list, then how can a much less diverse university embrace diversity?

Representation is so important, as it has been demonstrated across various forms of media

throughout history. When someone sees someone that looks like them in a book, on TV, or even

in a video game, they feel solidarity with that person. If a young black child who dreams of being

an actress sees a black actress on their television screen, they will feel validated and motivated to

delve into their interests, because if someone else can do it, so can they. This is the whole idea

behind Zarek’s research. There are literally no bad things that can come out of giving

entertainers of color more opportunities to succeed in the entertainment industry. It will not only

help those entertainers be their best selves, but will also help impressionable youth see that there

is a bright future ahead of them. Zarek’s research is impactful in what it directly means to

UNCG’s own theatre department, to the world as it is what we see constantly, and to himself, as

this project has his heart and soul in it.

Reflection Questions

1. What did you learn about your fellow researcher that you found surprising and why?
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a. Through this narrative assignment, I was surprised to learn about his issues with

UNCG’s own theatre department. I’ve actually done theatre nearly my entire life,

and have only stopped in recent years to focus on my psychological studies. It

shocked me how a university as diverse and accepting as UNCG would still be

undiverse in their casting choices. It also made me reflect on the casting choices

in the productions I was in in highschool. My junior year of highschool, we did a

play called Annie Get Your Gun. In that play, there are two Native American

characters… who we had played by two white men. Even though it is a

highschool production, there should still be a standard of having people who were

meant for that role, play that role.

2. What did you learn that you would use in your own research and why?

a. The idea of representation within media is something that can be tied into my own

research of Star Wars and epic poetry, though it can mostly be tied into the idea of

Star Wars. The original Star Wars trilogy was not that diverse, with only a

handful of characters of color. With the creation of the Sequel Trilogy, there were

two main characters that were people of color, one being black, and the other

being hispanic. This is really important because kids who would grow up with this

trilogy would see characters that looked so much like them doing amazing things.

Representation is an incredibly important subject, and I’m so glad that Zarek

delved into that subject in his project.

3. Who did you imagine your audience would be for your narrative and why?

a. I imagined the readers of the Minerva magazine as my audience for this narrative.

That is the actual audience of this narrative, so it makes sense to keep that in mind
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when reading it. The average person reading the Minerva magazine could be

absolutely anyone, so I tried to make this narrative sound professional yet

accessible to those who don’t constantly read academic articles.

4. What is working well about the introduction and what could use some work if you

had more time?

a. I think that my introduction really helps bring the reader into the shoes of

someone who goes through what Zarek describes on a daily basis. I tried to make

sure that there were some aspects of the introduction that helped elicit a sensory

response from people, as that makes for a powerful opening to a paper. I would

probably make the introduction longer if I had more time.

5. Did you include information from all of the interview questions?

a. I did include information from all of the interview questions from the previous

assignment.

6. Did you include at least two interesting quotes in your narrative?

a. Yes, I included three interesting quotes in my narrative.

7. Did the end of your narrative give the readers some sense of why this research project

matters to the researcher or to others?

a. Yes, I directly connected Zarek’s research topic to the world around us, and how

it was deeply important to him as well. This is something I alluded to throughout

the paper, but honed in on at the end.

8. Did you eliminate surface error, including grammar and punctuation errors?

a. Yes, I had a friend proofread the narrative as well to make sure that this paper was

free of surface error.

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