Diversity Sells, But Media Conglomerates Are More Interested in White Supremacy
UCLA’s Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón talks about her decade-long study on how Hollywood is leaving money on the table by refusing to platform diverse filmmakers
There’s a lie that diversity doesn’t sell. That media companies just want to make the most money, and they pick white-guy creators because that’s what audiences will buy. In this version, the media’s white supremacy problem is accidental, a byproduct of a market-based meritocracy that just happens to prefer the stories of a certain demographic.
That’s not true, and Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón has the numbers to prove it. More than a decade ago, she co-founded the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative at UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Their Hollywood Diversity Report, first published in 2014, ties diversity in front and behind the camera to box-office profits and eyes on in-home screens. The facts are now indisputable: Hollywood is leaving millions of dollars on the table by continuing to shut out people of color and women broadly.
In Trump’s second term, we see billionaire media owners aligning themselves with his anti-DEI rancor in their bids to gobble up bigger and bigger chunks of the media landscape. So it’s no surprise that after years of little progress, the most recent UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report shows an industry where diversity is in decline — even as films like KPop Demon Hunters, Sinners and Wicked top the charts.
Barbra Ramos
The discrimination is evident and rising. For example, the 2025 edition reports that women directed just 23.6 percent of streaming films — the lowest amount since Dr. Ramón and team began counting. That number is particularly telling because women directors hire more people of color and women than their male counterparts.
In addition, the report notes, “The proportion of lead actors of color declined from 2024’s high of 51 percent to just 36 percent — the first time in three years that figure fell below their proportion of the U.S. population… Meanwhile, the share of films by white directors grew from 61.3 percent in 2024 to 70.4 percent.”
And the list goes on.
To figure out what is happening and how we change it, I sat down with Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Cristina Escobar: Can you share what media representation really looks like and how it’s changed over time?
Ana-Christina Ramón: We have data going back to 2011, when we first started doing this research, and there was hardly any representation in terms of people of color. But when there was representation, it showed that people were interested in those films or TV shows, which we could see in the general box office information and general ratings.
As we went on, we started gathering more and more demographic information about the viewers and the movie ticket buyers, and then at the same time, we saw this rise. From 2011 to about 2018, there was this very incremental increase in people of color in casts overall. It wasn’t in the leading roles, but, especially for film, the supporting cast became more diverse. For directors of color and women directors, there’d be these blips, and then it would go back down.
There was a slow build-up through 2018 and 2019. And then, obviously, with the pandemic and the strikes, a lot of the films went back to having all-white casts. Because of that, 2024 was this case study of what happens when you pull back on on-screen diversity, which is a drop off at the box office — between 3.3 and 3.8 percent domestically. There was this enthusiasm gap for the audiences of color, who were not buying tickets on opening weekend.
The best box office since the pandemic was 2023 because they offered a lot of films that had diversity in the leads and in the cast. Then 2024 was this complete dip, and 2025 is somewhere in between. To illustrate these numbers in the report, we use a rocking-horse metaphor — there’s some movement, but you’re not really going anywhere.
CE: Take us into your most recent report — what do the 2025 numbers tell us?
ACR: When we first started looking at streaming originals, we saw that people of color, as filmmakers and even as actors, could find the most opportunities there. It was still difficult to break through, but there was at least this opening, this one road that you could take, where you could have your film seen.
The drawback to that was that you wouldn’t get data to show your success. There wasn’t really an equivalent to box office receipts, so it was hard to see where your career trajectory could go. Because of that, we’d talk about the difference between theatrical and streaming as the major leagues and minor leagues for filmmakers.
In the past years, the number of films keeps shrinking. In 2025, we couldn’t produce a top-100 list because there were only 89 original, English-language, direct-to-streaming films. Hollywood’s contracting, and for people of color who are trying to make it in the industry, the road has narrowed dramatically.
CE: Why is diversity in Hollywood important to building a multiracial democracy?
ACR: The research on how people process entertainment reveals that media becomes a strong part of their lived experience — particularly television and streaming, because they’re so ubiquitous and we have access to them at any minute.
If you see something repeated over and over again, then you begin to believe it, even if it’s not necessarily true. That’s something everyone can now understand based on what’s gone on in politics, a lot of it through news coverage. Hollywood is very similar. So even though something is fictionalized and people are aware of it being fictionalized, they can also believe it’s true.
Like how media portrays police work or emergency room doctors — if you’ve seen that from when you first started watching television to now, then you might think like “Oh, I know what detectives do.” If you see only a certain image portrayed of one particular group, then you do begin to believe that that portrayal is accurate. It becomes part of your lived experience, and you start to stereotype based on what you see.
One clear example is Westerns. Before some of the more recent shows with Native American representation, representation only focused on this historical, very limited view of them. They even did a survey a while back that said around 40 percent of people didn’t think that Native Americans existed anymore, that they were just from the past.
That’s just horrifying — and that’s the extent of the power media has over people’s thinking and their lives.
It is really important to have balanced views, to give people the power to tell their stories. But you can’t just say, “Oh, we just want more people of color because we want to hear their personal childhood stories.” No, we want the same range of stories from people of color that we get from white men.
We’re losing a lot of innovation and ideas right now. For example, the stuff Star Trek created in the ’60s and ’70s became things similar to products we have now. The show didn’t invent them, but it inspired them. We need all the groups to have that same chance to inspire and shape the future.
CE: How do we break the pattern and get meaningful media representation?
ACR: That’s the ultimate question. I like to say change can start now. Whoever’s in charge, they can make the change. They can invest in young creatives of color, more women, and so forth. We actually have seen in our data that white people are fine with watching people of color.
And you need large groups of young people of color now to build brand loyalty. If Hollywood wants to remain profitable, they need to invest. Sponsor more executives of color, and support them so they don’t burn out, don’t hit a ceiling where they can’t move up the ladder. That means having more than one, giving them mentorship, and making sure they have teams that understand them.
The studios have to go back to embracing diversity as the way to be profitable in the future — and be public about it. Tubi has been public about saying: “This is the market. We’re gonna do well by really investing in creatives of color and offering them programs and content that is of interest to our viewers who are young and more diverse.” It’s a multi-pronged approach, and it can work.
CE: What are you looking for next?
ACR: The most-streamed films in the past four years have been led by young girls of color. It was Encanto, Turning Red, Moana and then KPop Demon Hunters. The idea that kids who watch these movies over and over again will be fine, as soon as they hit 18, with women being second fiddle or not there at all, is ridiculous. Hollywood should really understand that Gen-Alpha kids are used to a certain level of representation, and as they grow older, it might change a little, but I don't think it’s going to change that much. So, how is Hollywood going to maintain their interest? If you don’t want them to only be on YouTube as they get older, then you need to offer them something that is of interest to them.
About the author
Cristina Escobar is the senior director of marketing and communications at Free Press. She’s also a cultural critic and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Latina Media Co, an indie outlet platforming Latina and queer Latinx perspectives. A true millennial, all of her medical knowledge comes from (re)watching Grey’s Anatomy. You can follow her on Instagram @cescobarandrade.
Teamwork
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The kicker
“[Hollywood] is an industry in flux — and in reverse, especially when it comes to diversification. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen with theatrical films, we’re now seeing the impact of this current political climate in very meaningful and concrete ways. As budgets tighten, opportunities for filmmakers of underrepresented backgrounds are always the first to be squeezed out.”—Dr. Darnell Hunt, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost and co-founder of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative
