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#TonysSoWhite might become the new social justice hashtag. In the midst of a notably diverse Broadway season, we delved into the Tony Awards database to see how they compared to Hollywood's highest honor. The result? The Tonys and the Oscars are almost the same institution when it comes to racial diversity. [A follow-up piece of in-depth analysis can be read here].
Since the awards began - 1929 for the Oscars, 1947 for the Tonys - over 95% of all nominees have been white, with the Tonys recognizing more people of color by 1%. The big difference is in the ratios: The Tonys recognize twice as many black artists, but the Oscars recognize three times as many Asians and Latinos.
The current Broadway season seems to fly in the face of the statistics, with a slew of likely nominations for the teams of Hamilton, The Color Purple, Eclipsed, and more. But it's an anomaly - even Lin-Manuel Miranda calls it "an accident of timing." The 2016 ceremony will hopefully be a watershed moment in recognizing diversity, but it's inaccurate - and obstructive - to claim there is not a deep statistical bias against minorities on Broadway.
Below are the results, which were culled from the Tony Awards records and provided by the Academy Awards library. For the purposes of this piece, ethnicity was divided into four large categories: white, black, Asian, and Hispanic. We know this isn't perfect, but it is in line with other studies that have examined race in entertainment (further details below).
First, let's look at the total number of nominees over time, including all the eventual winners:
Both the Tonys and the Oscars recognize white artists by an overwhelming majority. Whites make up 95.3% of all Tony nominees, and 96.4% of all Oscar nominees, a difference of only 1.1% between them. This doesn't take into account when people were nominated, however - minority recognition is becoming more frequent as the years go on. The results also don't account for the Tonys starting two decades after the Oscars. But we did the math on that, too: if we ignore the first 20 years of Academy Awards, the numbers would be even closer together, with the Tonys being only .45% more diverse.
The breakdown of the winners looks almost identical:
Important to note here is that the Tonys have twice as many acting categories, for both plays and musicals: 62 out of the 85 black winners were actors. However, even if you halve that number to account for it, the Tonys still award black performers at double the rate of the Oscars. Also worth noting: The Tonys and the Oscars have given almost the same number of awards to minority artists: 126 vs. 119.
The real difference is in the ratios of non-white nominees, seen here:
In a sense, the Oscars are more diverse than the Tonys - they have a more even spread between the minority groups. While they nominate about half as many black artists, they also nominate more than three times as many Latinos and Asians. In fact, only twelve people of Asian descent have ever won a Tony (three producers have won several apiece). A recent study found that the number of Asians on stage - let alone at the awards - has declined over the last decade, whereas Hispanic and black artists have increased in number. Which is to say nothing of Asians behind the scenes: only one Asian playwright – David Henry Hwang - has ever won a Tony, and that was nearly three decades ago.
So what can we take from this? Is Broadway a racist industry? I would argue no. It's overwhelmingly white, but there's no evidence to suggest that the power structure is actively suppressing minority voices. Of course, it depends on one's definition of racism - Ta-Nehisi Coates would probably disagree with me.
Tomorrow, we'll publish an in-depth analysis of this data, and explore the question of why Broadway remains so white, and where the industry will go from here. [This analysis is now live and can be read here.] For now, it's important to remember two things.
First: celebrating this season's diversity doesn't resolve Broadway's issues - it underscores them. That it took 70 years before Broadway had creative teams composed entirely of women and black artists is akin to damning with faint praise.
Second: it's essential not to dismiss this season as an anomaly. It's hugely important that we finally do have the creative teams mentioned above. Culture may change slowly, but once it hits a tipping point, there's usually no going back. The world spins only forward, as Tony Kushner put it.
Broadway - at its best - serves as a lens through which we see our own culture. Last year, Fun Home's big win reflected our nationwide shift concerning gay rights. Hopefully the nominators and voters will see 2016 as an opportunity to mark our burgeoning outcry for racial parity, justice, and visibility.
[This is one of several pieces we'll be publishing about diversity on Broadway. In addition to tomorrow's in-depth analysis, we'll also have a profile on Broadway's only two black lead producers - Stephen Byrd and Alia Jones-Harvey - along with a closer look at the economics of race in New York. We've already interviewed the historic team of Waitress about gender and the future of women on Broadway, which you can read here.]
[Click to the next page to see methodology for collecting the awards data.]
Categorizing race is a fraught endeavor, as questions of identity, heritage, and nationality become more nuanced, and artists of mixed race become more numerous. But for statistical measurement, there must be some kind of cut-off. For this study, we chose to draw the line at a "majority" of ethnic heritage, meaning that if an artist had one non-white parent, they would fall into that category, but if they had one non-white grandparent, they would be grouped as "white."
These results do not account for the way "whiteness" has changed over the last century, when at various points Italians, Irish, and Jews were considered non-white. We chose to stick with the current conventional wisdom. They also don't account for Native American or Arab artists, but we only found three who would be defined as such (we chose to include Tony Shalhoub and Arian Moayed, who are Lebanese and Iranian, in the Asian category; and Stephen Adly Guirgis, who is half-Egyptian, in the black category).
We also chose to follow the line of genetics rather than nationality - so Joaquin Phoenix is counted as white instead of Hispanic, as he was born in Puerto Rico but to white parents. We also didn't include Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, as those are accepted on behalf on entire countries, not specific artists. We did not include honorary or special awards, either - only competitive ones.
It's also important to note that this research is not definitive. Not every nominee has a bio or otherwise-researchable history, so we had to do our best educated guesswork for a number of cases. Many nominees were also production companies whose ethnic makeup was not public knowledge. Where possible, we made private requests, but we assumed - given the rest of the data - that when in doubt, especially when it came to producers, the unknowns were white. This means that white nominees may be slightly over-represented. However, given the rest of the overwhelming, unambiguous data, we're confident the significance of that gap is negligible.
If any artist feels an error has been made, or would like to further the conversation, please feel free to reach out on Twitter @LeemourSeymour, or use the contact form on my website www.lee-seymour.com.
