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Race and Queer Media Representation
Media representations of LGBT characters are unproportionally white. In GLAAD’s annual “We are on TV” report, it was found that out of the 813 broadcast network’s series regular characters, only 13% are black, 8% Latino/Latina, 4% Asian, and 2% multi-racial. Out of the 74 LGBT-identified characters on mainstream broadcast networks, only 11% are black, 11% Latina/Latino, and 5% Asian. People of color, therefore, make up 27% of characters and 34% of LGBT characters. “Popular television shows including Will & Grace, Sex and the City, Brothers and Sisters, and Modern Family routinely depict gay men. Yet the common characteristic among most televisual representations of gay men is that they are usually white.” Having both a queer and black or non-white character is creating multi-faceted “otherness,” which is not normally represented on television.

Additionally, while many shows depict LGBT people of color, they are often used as a plot device or in some type of trope. Santana Lopez, for example, from the teenage dramedy Glee, is a queer woman of color, however, she is often characterized as a Latina fetish and over-sexualized. In conjunction, Callie Torres, who was one of the first bi-sexual Latina characters on mainstream television, was first depicted as a “slut,” and this Latina stereotype was used as much of her single plot-device.

Moreover, non-white LGBT characters are often depicted as “race neutral.” For example, on the ABC Family show, GRΣΣK, Calvin Owens is openly gay and many of his storylines, struggles, and plots revolve around his self-identification as LGBT. However, while being physically African-American, it is never mentioned in the show, and he is never seen as “explicitly black.”

As queer politics continue to become a defining part of the decade, television continues to reflect that. Starting with hits like Modern Family, gay homonormativity is becoming a mainstay on broadcast television. There has been a cultural shift from white, gay men being depicted as non-monogamous sex-seekers, stemming from the AIDs epidemic to being “just like everyone else” in their quest to be fathers. This Hollywood trend, while expanding LGBT representations on TV, is really only giving a single-story to the LGBT community and completely neglecting other LGBT stories.

A recent exception to the lack of LGBT people of color on television represented in a realistic, non-fetish or race-neutral way, is the ABC Family show, The Fosters. The Fosters depicts a blended family of one biological child, two adopted children, and two foster children being raised by a lesbian, multi-racial couple. Two of the children are Latino and have struggles and storylines relating to that. The couple, whom the show is based around, also struggles with race as source of conflict on top of their LGBT storyline.