Hollywood Disconnect

We learn from the recently released "Writers Guild of America, West: 2009 Hollywood Writers Report" that the percentage of film writers classified as "minority" has held steady at 6% of working film writers since 1999. In actuality, the number of minority film writers has decreased from 119 in 2001 to 108 in 2007, but as a percentage, those with minority status have remained flat.

From 2001 to 2007, the number of Asian film writers doubled from 11 to 22, Native Americans decreased from 8 to 3, African-Americans dropped from 69 to 60 and the number of Latinos went from 31 to 23.

This means that as a percentage of the 1900 Writers Guild members employed as film writers during calendar year 2007, approximately 3% self-identified as African-American, 0.15% as Native Americans, while Latinos and Asians were tied at roughly 1.2%.

The Census Bureau's 2008 Estimate says that approximately 13% of the U.S. population is African-American, 1% Native American, 4.5% Asian and 15.5% are Latino or Hispanic.