"The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity." - Viola Davis.
I'm sure you've seen that quote numerous times floating around social media in the past couple of weeks. As an Asian woman, it took me less than a second to agree with the said statement. It did however come to my attention that many were almost baffled with such statement. Why? I asked myself. The answer came to me slowly — when people are not affected by discrimination or oppression, they often remain ignorant to the fact that they are privileged. It often takes numbers and statistics for them to come to the realization that the system does not cater to every pea in the pot.
That is why I took it upon myself to present the statistics of race and gender in the top grossing movies of the past year. I used the top nine grossing movies of 2015 as listed by Box Office Mojo to calculate the percentage of women and people of color in the listed films (note: "Inside Out" (#3), "Minions" (#5), "Home" (2015)(#10) and "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water" (#12) were all animated films and were not considered in this study. Instead I used "Fifty Shades of Grey" (#11) and "Straight Outta Compton" (#13) for the calculations). After establishing my list of movies, I headed over to Wikipedia and noted the first 10 actors listed in the "Cast" section for every movie. These 90 actors were used for calculating these results:
Percentage of White Actors - 36%
Percentage of White Actresses - 30%
Percentage of Black Actors - 21%
Percentage of Black Actresses - 2%
Percentage of Asian Actors - 2%
Percentage of Asian Actresses - 2%
Percentage of Latino/Hispanic Actors - 3%
Percentage of Latino/Hispanic Actresses - 2%
With these statistics it is important to note that in every race, the percentage of actresses is lower than the percentage of actors (with the exception of the Asian race). So while people like Nancy Lee Grahn carry some truth when they say that it is a battle for all women to make it in the world of entertainment, it is impossible not observe that POCs (with the exception of black actors) are all in single digits. It is time for Hollywood to fix these horrendous statistics and provide people of color, and specifically women of color with more roles and opportunities.
Note: Honorable Mention to "Pitch Perfect" (#8) and "Straight Outta Compton" (#13) for having an all-women and an all-colored cast, respectively.
