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I'm a very private person. The persona you see online barely skims the surface of who I am and my journey. I usually reveal bits of my life experiences through my television pilots. Each character embodies some element of my reality.
I find it appropriate to write this on the eve of the weekend of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech. I'm home after another mile swim and no work. Mississippi Burning is on Showtime. I allow it to play in the background while I write.
I can't say my life up until this point has been easy. From the day I was born, I have struggled. I was a preemie and I had to fight to live. I made it! It seems my life has been one struggle/fight after another. I triumph. I breathe. Another struggle/challenge appears. It got me to thinking. Why? Is it too much to ask for a longer period of solitude and fortune? Is struggle part of my DNA?
Not so long ago, my grandfather on my father's side was killed by a white man in a small town in Mississippi. Shot dead in the street while my father, a child, watched. He crawled over to his dead father and sat in the middle of the street in his blood trying to wake him. I wonder. Besides being black, what was the reason my grandfather was shot dead in the street? This incident of hatred is part of my DNA.
With all that has happened to me, one would think I killed somebody! I don't play the victim card. Never have, never will. I don't open up to people. I don't gossip, I keep my emotions inside and I don;t allow myself to get close. Distance is safe. Love is elusive.
I have been disappointed and betrayed by so many people. Many times for no other reasons than jealousy or insecurity of others. I am a very driven person. Not lazy by any stretch of the imagination. I usually accomplish many things I set out to do. Truth be told, I wanted to be a profiler with the FBI. I love investigative research. When I failed at achieving that goal. I had to find another goal. Television writing fell into my lap. I have yet to achieve this goal. As of late, it seems that this too will be only a dream and not a reality.
Despite the success of series like “Black-ish,” “Empire,” and “Fresh Off the Boat,” the broadcast networks’ push for diversity hit a stumbling block with the rollout of the new fall lineup. A Variety investigation into new scripted shows for the 2016-17 season reveals that 90% of showrunners are white, and almost 80% are male.
This is based on information provided by the five broadcast networks, which gave Varietythe names of the showrunners of their new scripted programs (a total of 50 across 38 new series). Variety independently confirmed the race and gender of each, via multiple sources. All names and data used for this story is available below. (Showrunner designations were not yet available for four series — two at NBC and two at ABC — and information on those programs was not included in the statistical analysis of the new season.)
Showrunners not only determine the creative direction of their programs; they also oversee the hiring, firing, and mentoring that gives the next generation of creators a chance to ascend. Shows run by white men tend to lead to more shows led by white men.
A lack of inclusion behind the scenes also affects storytelling. A study from USC Annenberg’s Institute for Diversity and Empowerment noted that actresses are more likely to receive speaking roles if women are creators. But that organization’s most recent study, which was published in 2015, reported that men outnumber women as creators by more than 3 to 1 in all realms of TV, including cable and streaming. Meanwhile, for the 2014-15 season, 19% of broadcast network programs had no speaking roles for African-American characters, and 59% had none for Asian characters, Annenberg says.
Of the 50 showrunners for the new season, two are women of color, and three are men of color. Studies by the Writers Guild of America show that non-white writers have constituted no more than 13% of writers-room employment for several years (and in some years, the figure has been even lower).
Variety found that women, who constitute 51% of the American population, will run 22% of the new shows. That’s not much better than the state of affairs in 1997-98, when 18% of the shows on the broadcast networks had women creators, according to San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
