Kenan Thompson Blames Black Women for Lack of Black Women on SNL
LatestSaturday Night Live has a huge diversity problem. Specifically, it has a huge diversity problem when it comes to hiring female performers of color (though its track record for hiring non-white men isn’t exactly stellar, either). This isn’t breaking news. The show is constantly called out for it’s overwhelming whiteness and yet, somehow, every year, it manages to only get whiter.
So who’s to blame? Lorne Michaels? NBC? Our country’s exhausting and terrible history of institutionalized racism? Well, Kenan Thompson, one of two black performers on SNL‘s current cast, has a theory and it might surprise you: He’s blaming the quality of black female performers.
RECORD SCRATCH.
In an interview with TV Guide, Thompson announced that he is no longer willing to play women in sketches (in the past, he’s played Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Angelou and pretty much any other African American woman to appear on screen). Great. Expecting him to constantly portray women is condescending to both him and the person he’s portraying.