In any given film, there are dozens of actors whose roles are unnamed in the credits — "nurse #1" or "man with balloons," for instance. Their job is to go unnoticed, yet they are integral to the realism of cinema: In the background, they mill about naturally and seamlessly, transporting us into their world.
Last week, we took a look at the gender differences between the most common roles given to these background actors. We found a dramatic power dynamic at play: While "cop," "guard," and "doctor" topped the list for men, women were frequently relegated to such roles as "party girl" and "receptionist."
But we noticed something else interesting: For men, "gang member" ranked in the top 10. We were curious: Who exactly is cast as a gang member in film?
To answer this question, we turned to Bruce Nash at the Numbers, who has spend years compiling a database of 160,000 acting credits from 26,000 major US movie releases. Using this data, we pulled a list of every actor who was credited as playing a "gang member," "gangster," "gangbanger," or "thug," then looked them up individually. We recorded each actor’s race (when noted on a CV or agency site) and omitted anyone nonverifiable.
The answer: Gang member (and related) roles are disproportionately filled by black actors.
In total, we looked up 220 actors who played these roles, all but four of whom were men.
An astounding 62 percent of all actors who were credited as "gang member" are black. Related credits — "gangster" (61 percent black), "gangbanger" (60 percent), and "thug" (66 percent) — drew similar results. Interestingly, another related term we looked at, the slightly more dignified "henchman," was 81 percent white and only 4 percent black.
But black actors do not enjoy the same representation within other typical minor roles in film. Among actors who played a "police officer," for instance, only 18 percent were black. For "doctor" and "pilot" — two other common background roles — the stats were even worse, at 9 and 3 percent, respectively.
These figures are not a reflection of real-life demographics.
According to the most recent statistics compiled by the National Gang Center, black people represent 35 percent of all gang members in America. Yet in Hollywood, they represent 64 percent of all onscreen gang members.
White actors are overrepresented here too. This could be due to an effort by directors to diversify large groups of criminals onscreen.
Being black in the audition room
Hollywood’s apparent preference for black actors in gang-related roles is a signifier that the industry’s casting directors engage in typecasting. Bear Bellinger, a black actor, touched on this in a post for Vox earlier this year:
"I am a black man constantly having to conform my blackness to what white people, mainly men, on the other side of the [casting] table believe to be true. These men have no ill intent in their ideas about or depictions of blackness; they also have no lived experience. And mine, as the only actual black person in the room, is almost never valued or understood."
Another actor, who played a "gangbanger" in the 2005 crime drama Four Brothers, saw a similar problem. Like several other black actors I spoke with, he wished to remain anonymous, for fear of being labeled the "angry black guy."
"As an actor, you have to take the roles you can get," he told me. "But when a director is casting gang members or thugs for a film, a lot of the time you’ll be told — or it’s hinted at — that he’s looking specifically for a [black man] and that’s weird to me."
Not all actors who play these roles agree.
"I have no problem at all with it," says Shun Hagins, who was credited as a "heavy gangster" in Snitch (2013) and has played similar roles in other films. "I will take any kind of work long as it is cutting checks."
"I grew up around thug and gangsters," he adds. "I have seen so many killings and fights; playing these roles comes easy. I have a lifetime of hood in me. That's just who I am."
In any case, one problem seems to be that screenwriters, casting managers, and directors (the majority of whom are white) have free rein to choose whom they see fit for certain roles. What we see on the screen are their preconceived notions of racial roles.
Until directorial roles are more reputably diversified — in terms of both gender and race — these issues are likely to continue.