Saturday Night Live has recently been criticized for lacking racial and gender diversity in both cast and crew. This is not a new problem, but the debate was reignited when Kenan Thompson, one of only two black cast members, stated in an interview that there were currently no black women on the show because “they never find ones that are ready”. Always quick to turn controversy into a joke, a recent SNL sketch had actress Kerry Washington playing a range of black women, mocking their own lack of diversity. Then, a little over a month ago, SNL hired Sasheer Zamata, the first black female cast member in five years. While the speed at which the show is addressing their lack of diversity is commendable, SNL’s diversity problem cannot be solved by a single hire, and the controversy illustrates that what gets deemed “entertaining” or “funny” is about more than the quality of the joke. In reality, deep-seated assumptions about race and gender strongly influence who shows up on your television screen every night.

Women face ongoing inequality in film and television production jobs, and while the rates of occupational segregation for women of color have fallen since the 1940s, their decline has stagnated since 2000.
However, even as minorities gain access to white-dominated mediums, they struggle to control the way their culture is portrayed and perceived, as the media often perpetuates inaccurate representations of minority groups.
The SNL controversy is one example of the much larger cultural norm of marginalizing and stereotyping black women, whose misrepresentation in American society is a problem that runs much deeper than their perceived sense of humor.