Numbers Don’t Lie: It’s the Most Racially Diverse Set of Emmy Nominees Ever

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When the dust settled around the 2016 Emmy Awards nominations, there were lots of conversations to be had, about Game of Thrones‘ success and Orange Is the New Black‘s failure and the fact that streaming networks got more nominations than ever before. Thankfully, one conversation that did not need to be had was about the dearth of people of color in the acting categories. Six months after the Academy Awards stepped in it by presenting its second year in a row of zero acting nominees of color — and thus setting off the “Oscars So White” controversy that led to long-overdue changes in Academy membership — the Emmys presented their most diverse slate of nominees so far.

Looking at the twelve acting categories — lead/supporting actors and actresses in Drama, Comedy, and Limited Series/TV Movies — the 2016 Emmys noms recognized 18 performances by people of color. That adds up to 25% of the full slate of acting nominees. Those nominees represented 15 different TV programs, ranging from The People v. O.J. Simpson and Black-ish to Master of None and Getting On. These numbers are up from last year’s already impressive totals, when 16 nominees of color represented 21% of total acting nominees.

Last year’s Emmys made headlines when three of the six actresses who won awards were black women. Viola Davis’s acceptance speech for Best Actress in a Drama spoke to issues of representation and opportunity in the industry.

“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity,” Davis said. This year, she’s one of seven black women up for Emmys.

It’s a great sign for the landscape of television that diversity is being celebrated and rewarded in far greater numbers than in the movies. The trends are demonstrable and tell a clear story: the Emmys and the Oscars are moving in opposite directions. The Emmys have seen a sharp uptick in POC nominees in the past few years. As the chart above shows, diversity numbers were crazy low as recently as 2013, and on average over the last decade, people of color made up for 10.6% of all Emmy acting nods. Meanwhile, the Oscars have experienced a steep decline from where they were a decade ago. The Oscars’ 10-year average for POC nominees is actually higher than the Emmys (at 13.5%), but those numbers are in free-fall. At the 2006 Academy Awards, eight performers of color were nominated (Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson both took home statues); now they’re coming off of back-to-back years with zero POC acting nominees and an avalanche of bad press about it.

For many 2016 nominees, Emmy success in front of the camera is a reflection of diversity behind the camera. Master of NoneAmerican CrimeBlack-ishEmpire — all Emmy-nominated series being written and produced by people of color. It’s really an example for everything the Oscars (and the movie industry, really) are doing wrong. Increased opportunity to tell diverse stories leads to increased opportunities for diversity in casting leads to increased visibility for actors of color in nominatable roles.

The era of Peak TV has gotten a lot of attention and certainly has its ups and downs. But if Peak TV also means peak diversity — a trend that’s steadily moving upward, if the Emmy nominations are anything to go by — then it’s tough to see it as anything but a good thing.