Racism in Hollywood costs the industry 10 billion dollars a year

The consulting firm, McKinsey, released a study back in March detailing how racism causes the industry 10 billion dollars annually. The article states that the C-suite in entertainment is less diverse than other industries such as healthcare, heavy industry, and non-entertainment tech, media, and telecom. Ninety-two percent of leadership is white. 

The Hollywood Reporter article on the study said, “Black artists face hidden barriers that include smaller pitch sales, stereotypical assumptions of what kinds of Black stories are preferred, and lower production and publicity spends (on average, Black-led films receive 24 percent smaller production budgets than their non-Black counterparts, while movies written, directed or produced by Black talent get 43 percent less money).” 

The Blacklist founder, Franklin Leonard (a former McKinsey analyst), helped initiate the study. In the article, he said, “Hollywood is less diverse than every major industry in the country, but we’re also exporting that bias and view of the world to everyone in the world via movies, television, and every place people consume content.” This is a great point and a reason one could argue that we live in a system of global white supremacy and that it continues to negatively impact every part of our affairs. 

One proposal by the Mckinsey authors was that companies could tie executive bonuses to diversity and inclusion targets. This sounds like an actionable recommendation that could create positive change. However, it must not be diluted by coupling black representation with “other” groups to meet those targets.