90210 John Ringo No

[tablesaw]

There's a trailer for the upcoming remake of Beverly Hills 90210:

Compare the cast to the demographics of Beverly Hills High School, the real-world school that both shows are based on:

In 2007, about 17% of the 2,362 students at the school are of Asian extraction, about 4% are Latino and about 5% are African American. Nearly 70% of the students are white, a category that includes 450 students of Persian descent. [6] Most of them are Persian Jews whose parents fled the Iranian Revolution.

About 35% of Beverly's current student body were born outside the United States, and 42% of its students speak a first language other than English. Many of these students are of Persian descent. [3] (pdf)

—Wikipedia (but don't give me crap about citing Wikipedia because I just spent a whole bunch of time correcting the section)

Also, don't get ojouchan started on the background of the black student (because god knows the only way a black man could be in Beverly Hills is if he's adopted).

Comments

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Ok, so let's suppose we pick one student at random. 70% of the time, he's white. (Admittedly, this is where the mathematical argument is going to break down in the correspondence between TV shows and reality, but it doesn't affect the sociological issue I'm about to raise.)

Now, what percentage of that person's friends/clique are white? I'm guessing, based on my experience with self-segregation at my college's dining halls, the number is very close to 100%. Perhaps you disagree; perhaps things are different now, or are different in Beverly Hills.

(And if the cast is not a single clique, but two connected cliques, this still applies through the conntections. But I've never watched the show. Maybe it's about a bunch of totally unconnected people... that seems unlikely, though.)

So, yeah, I suspect any claim that this is "unrealistic" is false.

[tablesaw]

Ok, so let's suppose we pick one student at random. 70% of the time, he's white.

Are you sure about that? Remember that about 27% of that 70% (19% of the whole student body) is Iranian. This is probably because the data here that's listing "White" is similar to the U.S. Census definition which includes the Middle East. So removing students of Persian descent from the mix, and knocking off a few percentage points for non-Iranian white students descending from places other than Europe, the traditional view of American whiteness is reduced from a majority to a plurality.

(The character of Navid is of Persian descent, although he is not played by a Persian actor.)

As for "self-segregation," the appearance is different from reality. Although members of minorities often take opportunities for intragroup dialogue, in student bodies that have this kind of mix, the trend is for more diverse friendship groups, not less. In one study of UCLA students, almost everyone said that they thought the campus was divided along racial/ethnic lines, but nearly half also reported that there was no majority racial/ethnic background among their group of friends.

As for "unrealistic," if it means impossible, then no it's not impossible. If it means "unrepresentative," then yes, I do believe it's unrepresentative of the experience of attending a public school in Los Angeles, even in Beverly Hills.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Ok, I missed the Iranian bit (there is a mix of student-counts and percentages in the quoted article which is unfortunate in this department).

'As for "self-segregation,", the appearance is different from reality.'

Well, maybe it is now, at least at UCLA, or at least whenever that article was written (it is unfortunately undated), but I strongly doubt that was the case in 1989 at the University of Maryland (which is the only 'appearance' I was talking about). If this has changed, that's great (and I did say "perhaps things are different now, or are different in Beverly Hills"), so ok, I retract my critique.

[duchez.livejournal.com]

Huh, I don't know about that. My crowds have definitely followed the self-segregation pattern, and that's been my experience pretty much throughout school and work. The desis at work tend to congregate together - they are the ones who go out and do things together, with a token non-desi mixed in. Or rather, as is often the case, the "honorary desi"

Most of my groups - at work and at school - have been predominantly East Asian - and while I've definitely been good friends with other races and ethnicities, I would never say "there was no majority" - there definitely was.

And since I generally hang out with ifMUD nowadays, I now have almost zero Asian influences.

And lest I be accused of extrapolating my experience to the entire world, it's something I've been struck with whenever I look on social networking sites. Look at a "friends list" on Facebook/MySpace/Friendster/Orkut/etc - sure there is a mix, but there is a clear majority of one over other.