The Problem With Diversity: It Lacks Diversity

For 29 years, Bill Maher has been touting how diverse his guest panelists are. Long-considered one of television’s leading liberal voices, we decided to do the actual math.

Bill Maher’s home and studio are in Los Angeles County and within one hour’s drive of both reside 8 million people. Of those 8 million, 80% are ethnic Americans (who identify neither as Black nor white.) Fully 40% are Mexican Americans, another 40% are Korean-Americans, Iranian Americans, Chinese Americans, Armenian-Americans and other ethnics.

African-Americans make up 4%. Yet on Bill Maher’s programs the odds of an African-American being on his panel is 40,000% greater than a Mexican-American. Those odds are even worse for Korean-Americans, Iranian-Americans, Armenian-Americans, Chinese-Americans and other ethnic Angelenos.

As for the New York Times, that other paragon of diversity, their record is even worse than Maher’s. The odds of the New York Times portraying an African-American in a positive feature article is more than 100,000% greater then for a Mexican-American.

And what about other media and their records? All are culpable but none traffic in pimping diversity on the scale of Maher and the New York Times. The changing face of America is no longer only Black and white (actually it never was) but there are deep, deep vested interests who want it to remain or appear to remain so and exclude ALL others from the conversation.