Hollywood struggles with diversity in part because of laws that promote diversity

[Commentary] There are lots of reasons the film and television industries are dominated by white men, but one of the most unlikely is one of the centerpieces of Alyssa Rosenberg's fascinating recent piece on Hollywood's diversity problems in the Washington Post. Let me repeat one of Rosenberg's key points: the same laws used to protect against employment discrimination also make it slightly harder to increase diversity in Hollywood, both on screen and off.

Obviously that's not the only reason Hollywood struggles in this regard, and Rosenberg's piece discusses several others. But a persistent criticism leveled against casting directors by those in favor of greater, more accurate representation on TV comes when, say, an actor of Chinese descent plays the part of a Japanese person, or when an actor of Italian descent plays someone of Latino origin. Legally, a casting director cannot ask applicants to reveal their ethnic background. A good recent example of this is FX's drama Tyrant, which cast a white actor in the role of the son of a Middle Eastern dictator. Such laws have served to protect people being hired in certain workplaces -- where questions about race, religion, or sexuality could yield answers that spark prejudice or bias on the part of those doing the hiring. But they make certain aspects of Hollywood's attempts to diversify more difficult.