Idiot New York Times take on diversity

Edward Wyatt of the Times seems to disbelieve the reality of America's racial diversity, painting it as something that exists only within the artificial construct of the United Nations.

Generation Mix: Youth TV Takes the Lead in Diversity Casting: The red-carpet area at the premiere of the Disney Channel’s new Cheetah Girls movie last week looked less like the typical Hollywood cast party than some sort of United Nations session.

Adrienne Bailon, who plays Chanel in the trio of Cheetah Girls, drew on her Ecuadorean and Puerto Rican roots and chatted in Spanish with a television interviewer. Meanwhile Kiely Williams, an African-American actress who plays Aqua, and Sabrina Bryan, who plays Dorinda and whose real name is Reba Sabrina Hinojos, answered questions and waved to fans.

Deepti Daryanani, an actress from Calcutta, and Rupak Ginn, an American actor whose parents emigrated from India, wore outfits inspired by their roles in the television movie, “The Cheetah Girls One World,” in which the group travels to India to star in a film after one of its members misunderstands an invitation to Bollywood as one to Hollywood.

Other Disney stars in attendance included Brenda Song, the daughter of a Laotian Hmong immigrant father and a Thai-American mother, who starred in the Disney Channel movie “Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior”; Anna Maria Perez de Tagle, a daughter of Filipino and Spanish parents, and her “Camp Rock” co-star Roshon Fegan, who is part Filipino; and Shanica Knowles, an African-American actress who plays a high school rival of Miley Cyrus’s character on “Hannah Montana.”

It's almost like Wyatt didn't read his own quotes:

“This group of people is reflective of the life we all live right now,” said Debra Martin Chase, an executive producer of “The Cheetah Girls One World,” which will be shown Friday on the Disney Channel.

“One-third of the U.S. population is now nonwhite,” said Ms. Chase, one of a handful of prominent African-American producers in Hollywood. “That is reflected in the Disney Channel projects because they are committed to diversity. It has been a priority for them all along.”

Wyatt goes even further down his alice in wonderland path, citing as diversity the fact that the new 90210 has a couple of minor characters who are non-white, including one who's playing a fake ethnic role:

And “90210,” the updated version of the seminal 1990s teen drama set in Beverly Hills that will begin this fall on CW, features two minority cast members: Tristan Wilds, an African-American actor previously seen in HBO’s “Wire,” and Michael Steger, a multiethnic actor who plays an Indian film director in “The Cheetah Girls One World.” Mr. Steger, of Ecuadorean, Norwegian and Austrian descent, will portray an Iranian-American high school student in “90210.”

The article for all its wrong-headedness does, I think, mean well; but maybe the Times needs to take some lessons from Disney on this:

Gary Marsh, president for entertainment for Disney Channels Worldwide, said that executives at the company talked every day about how to promote greater diversity in front of and behind the camera.

“It’s something we work really hard at to make it look effortless,” he said. “We constantly push directors and casting directors and producers to make different decisions than they might otherwise make.”