The December TV Character Ethnicity Report

I suspect that at least two of the three people read my blog will recognise this post as a continuation of grand excuse for procrastination the Monthly Fictional Criminal Report. If you want to know what all that was about and think you can stay awake long enough than an explanation is here.


The programs stacked up as follows...

%NW = the percentage of non-regular characters who were non-white

%WC = the percentage of non-regular white characters who were criminals.
%NWC = the percentaged of non-regular non-white characters who were criminals.

Show Episodes %NW %WC %NWC
Prime Suspect 3 21% 42% 56%
Burn Notice 3 16% 43% 50%
Blue Bloods 1 0% 67% 0%
Person of Interest 2 47% 25% 21%
Once Upon A Time 2 8% 0% 0%
Leverage 4 25% 44% 78%
The Closer 4 19% 28% 86%
Castle 1 0% 80% 0%
Hawaii 5.0 2 30% 32% 63%
Hart of Dixie 1 25% 0% 0%
CSI 2 18% 36% 33%
Law and Order: SVU 1 31% 44% 25%
The Mentalist 2 15% 13% 75%
Grimm 3 8% 38% 0%
Unforgettable 1 8% 8% 0%

Because of the low number of episodes involved I don't think we can draw any conclusions from the individual tallies yet.

Overall the figures 32 episodes are this...

White Non-Regulars no. %group %total
Non-differentiated 17 7% 5%
Sympathetic 134 51% 41%
Unsympathetic 25 10% 8%
Sympathetic Criminal 14 5% 4%
Unsympathetic Criminal 39 15% 12%
Vicious Criminal 3 1% 1%
Career Criminal 29 11% 9%

Total White non regulars 261 characters 79% of total

Non-White Non-Regulars no. %group %total
Non-differentiated 5 7% 2%
Sympathetic 23 33% 7%
Unsympathetic 8 12% 2%
Sympathetic Criminal 2 3% 1%
Unsympathetic Criminal 5 7% 2%
Vicious Criminal - 0% 0%
Career Criminal 26 38% 8%

Total non-white non regulars 69 characters 21% of total

White Criminals 33% of white non-regular characters
Black Criminals 48% of non-white non-regular characters

My instinct is that the majority of series will settle at a 80/20 split white/non-white with a third of all white characters and half of all non-white characters criminals of various stripes.

We shall see.

Remember this is not an academic study and is merely done out of curiosity on mine and my friends part. I'd love someone to do a second by second, line by line racial analysis of non-soap drama in the US (and the UK for that matter) - I suspect the producers would come out looking even worse but I can't prove it.