Where is the Ethnic Diversity?

Following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, people were forced to wake up and acknowledge the lack of Diversity across brands, businesses, films and more.  

Since then, within the film Industry, many companies have made posts and statements about how ‘Diversity’ is a core value of theirs. However, in Australia, while casting has begun to integrate actors of different ethnicities, a complete lack of ethnic diversity is still being seen across the board when it comes to crew. When a company or film production post their cast and crew photo, the ethnic people can be counted on one hand – if they’re even there at all.  

And while yes, we’re starting to see different genders, sexualities and people of disability – Diversity does not mean adding people from these communities and still keeping them White. Are we to believe Non-White people in these communities do not exist? 

In an Actors on Actors Interview with Variety, Anthony Mackie (Falcon in Marvel) stated that “hiring the black people for the black movie” could suggest that “they’re not good enough when you have a mostly white cast”. This was in reference to the fact that Black Panther had a large number of Black crew members opposed to other Marvel movies which had majority White crew. 

It begs to question –  if these crew members of different ethnicities are out there and clearly possess the talent, why aren’t they being found in current film productions?  

And while we occasionally have opportunities arise looking for “Diverse Performers” – a huge issue arises where these characters or stories are written to a very specific race, gender, sexuality, ability, so much so, that only those specific performers are able to apply, leaving out an entire cohort of other Diverse performers once again. Perhaps performers should be selected before the scripts are written? Or maybe scripts should be more open to all types of Diversity, essentially a character on a page, and then tailored once a performer has been chosen? 

More needs to be done to give Equal Opportunity to Actors/Crew in this industry without somehow side-stepping Ethnic Diversity. Australia is a beautifully multi-cultural country and that deserves to be showcased across all areas of production.