Diversity Experts Studied Emmys Group — And Found ‘Deep-Seated Resistance’ to Change

In 2020, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the nearly 20,000-member-strong group that puts on the PRimetime Emmy Awards each fall, was in the midst of much the same reassessment of its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as Hollywood’s other most influential organizations. Sparked by the #OscarsSoWhite campaign that erupted in 2015 and encouraged by Directors Guild and Cinematographers Society of America programs to hire and train more diverse candidates for industry jobs, the entertainment business’ reckoning had already begun.

Then came that summer’s protests over the murder of George Floyd.

The unrest “sparked a massive conversation across the entire country about racial representation and social injustice, which served to further cement our desire to ensure that television was doing all it could to improve the status of representation, even in the midst of the pandemic,” says Television Academy President and COO Maury McIntyre, who credits Frank Scherma, its chairman and CEO since 2019, with making representation one of the academy’s top priorities. The academy engaged DEI consultant ReadySet to conduct a DEI-related survey of its membership in 2021.

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At the academy’s most public event, the Emmy Awards, that representation has often fallen short: A Times analysis of the Emmy nominees in the major acting categories (lead and supporting in comedy and drama series and limited series/television movie) dating back to 2000 found that white performers received approximately 84% of the Emmy nominations over more than two decades — rising, in some years, up to 97%. McIntyre chalks up the lack of diversity in awards nominations to a lack of diversity in roles, citing series such as “When They See Us” and “Lovecraft Country” as examples of inclusive programming producing inclusive nominees.

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Whether the membership that votes on the Emmys is itself representative of the broader populace or the entertainment industry is impossible to know for certain, though, as the academy does not — and will not — inquire into its members’ demographics.

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According to ReadySet, 28% of members responded to the 2021 survey, which McIntyre calls the largest such response the academy has ever had. That group did (mostly) provide demographic information, though it can’t be known, even to the academy’s leadership, how representative those numbers are of the organization overall. Of the respondents, 69% were white (compared to 64% in the U.S. as a whole); 51% were male (49.5% nationally).

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Seventy-three percent of TV academy members surveyed report positive levels of “overall satisfaction and engagement” with the organization, and believe the organization can be a “trailblazing influencer.” But ReadySet also identified a number of areas for improvement in its DEI profile, including the diversity of the academy’s leadership, the body’s “transparency, accountability and communication” and the perception that its DEI efforts are not substantive.

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{snip} “Members perceived inadequate diverse representation in membership and leadership leading to feelings of exclusion and marginalization based on their outgroup identities,” the study’s authors write. “There was substantial underrepresentation of Disabled perspectives and no representation of Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native American, Indigenous nor Veteran identities on the Board.”

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To wit, while 92% of white male respondents said they felt positive about the academy’s diversity, only 46% of women of color did. In “belonging & inclusion,” white men scored 93% positive, women of color 46%; in “leadership,” white men scored 96% positive, women of color 39%; and in “voice & communication,” white men scored 97% positive, women of color 36%.

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Among the initiatives McIntyre cites is the academy’s internship program, which he calls “a pipeline to the industry, focused on underrepresented and underserved communities”: “We are going through 60 to 65 interns a year where the majority, almost 75%, come from BIPOC communities, many of whom are first-generation college students,” he says. {snip}

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