The Best Television Shows to Watch as a Person of Color

Hollywood has always been known for “whitewashing,” or lacking diversity in many key roles as a woman and/or a person of color. But each day, television is changing its dynamic and catering to an audience of all voices, colors, and backgrounds. In fact, some of the best television features men and women of color in their element.

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Here are the best shows to watch if you want something that best represents your true “American” experience.

1. Jane the Virgin

Gina Rodriguez brings a fresh, down-to-earth take on a show idea taken from its Venezuelan counterpart, “Juana la Virgin.” The show focuses on three generations of women: 23-year-old Jane, her mother Xiomara, and her grandmother Alba. The show weaves in many elements of telenovelas, which are problems regarding conflicts in class and cultural institutions.

What is wonderful about “Jane the Virgin” is that it does not adhere to cultural stereotypes of Latinas often perpetuated in media. There are no one-dimensional “spicy” Latinas in this show. Instead, every character is multidimensional and there is more focus on the matriarchy of the Villanueva family, rather than their “sexiness.”

Instead, they are colorful and nuanced. They are portrayed as actual humans, which is refreshing to television.

2. Black-ish

“Black-ish” centers on the Johnsons, an African-American, upper-middle-class family in California. The show addresses the racism they face as a family and depicts the racism against African-Americans in America as a whole. Politically and culturally relevant, they touch on issues ranging from police brutality and Black Lives Matter to LGBTQ issues. One particularly enlightening episode was the episode after the 2016 presidential election, where the Johnsons dealt with the controversial results at the workplace, school, and on a personal level.

The best shows on television present the complexities that come from being a person of color in this country and “Black-ish” does not shy away from that.

3. Modern Family

With excellent writing and a superb ensemble cast, “Modern Family” has been going strong since 2009. The show depicts Jay Pritchett, a patriarch whose family and children have a unique family set-up. Pritchett is an elderly man married to a hilarious, much younger Colombian wife with a preteen son, and his two grown children have their own diverse families.

His daughter, Claire has a traditional family structure with her husband and three children while his son, Mitchell is gay and married to a man with an adopted daughter from Vietnam. The show explores the typical dysfunction that comes with family with hilarious results.

4. Fresh off the Boat

The first American sitcom to air on primetime television since the ’90s, “Fresh off the Boat” follows a Taiwanese family who moves from Chinatown in Washington D.C. to Orlando, Florida. Dealing with topics commonly faced by immigrations from issues with cultural assimilation, the embracing of the “American dream,” and the awkwardness that arises from being a minority, “Fresh off the Boat” is a gem in helping produce cross-cultural dialogue in major network television.

5. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” has many Caucasian characters, but the show is groundbreaking in its casting of Filipino heartthrob, Vincent Rodriguez, who plays John Chan, the love interest of main character Rebecca Bloom in the show. Helping to increase family and cultural representation of Filipino life in America, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” affirms that “heartthrobs” are not exclusive to one color or culture.

Overall, diversity sells. All of these shows are critically acclaimed in their depictions of minority family life and conflicts. If media continues down this road, it looks like entertainment looks promising for a person of color.