Racewire Reports on Whitening Hollywood

One of the things I love most about Racewire is their pop commentary - they have had hilarious analyses of Harry Potter, Disney princess movies, and other films. Most recently they posted a link to the top five most unintentionally racist films and then yesterday they released that a recent SAG report AG looked at casting reports from 2007-2008 and found that the number of people of color hired for film and television roles has dropped to 27.5% of total roles cast in 2008.

Blacks were the largest nonwhite group cast, according to SAG, but also lost the most roles in 2008, dropping from 14.8% to 13.3%. Latino roles decreased slightly, losing most in the lead role category. A Latino starred in 7.2% of features in 2007. Only 3.4% were the main characters in 2008. American Indians, despite their romance with the silver screen, had the fewest jobs, at 0.3% in both years.

For the full article click here.

I wonder what this says about our society - is Hollywood reflecting the increased tensions surrounding race in the US? Or where is this coming from... I wish I knew more about the process of what films and shows are made and why. It seems to me that this trend has been a long time coming because it takes a while to make a movie. But I'm not sure what it means although it's a disturbing trend and is also going to be increasingly misrepresentative of our society as it exists in reality, since we are quickly headed to a demographically majority-minority population. Any ideas for the implications?