Parks & Recreation & Diversity

The show, Parks & Recreation, is one of my favorite television shows, with its clever comedy and heartwarming stories. It is also one of my favorites because of its colorful characters. And by colorful, I mean colorful. This show does indeed reflect racial and gender diversity to a very high standard. Though the cast is mainly white, major characters in the show include an Indian man, an African American woman, and a very apparently mixed woman. The characters are also very diverse in the gender department, having more than half the cast women, and the star of the show itself being a strong and empowered woman.

In fact, many of the jokes on the show address the issue on racial and gender stereotyping. Tom Haverford, the Indian man previously mentioned, was born in America, and the show addresses how he often gets annoyed when people assume he was born in some Indian country.

Leslie Knope, the main character, who embodies a strong woman running for office, has daily struggles with being in a head figure in the government and also a woman. She receives countless backlash just for being a woman. They have portrayed many ignorant characters in the show who believe that Leslie should just calm down in the government and stay at home and get a normal "woman job." The show actually largely focuses on the issue at hand. They tend not to stereotype the characters by race or by gender.