Black Women in Science-Fiction Where are they?

As a HUGE fan of horror and Scifi this something that I've thought about before and I feel the same way that this blogger does, so I decided to share this post with you to see what you think. The link to the blogger who wrote it is pasted below:

Posted by Alden, February 18, 2009 12:59 AM | Permalink

http://www.schemamag.ca/archive2/2009/02/black_women_in_science-fiction.html

According to science-fiction television, black women remain a visible minority. Despite the dominant visibility of African American women on American television today, according to sci-fi know-it-all Richard Whettestone's firsttvdrama.com, as of 2005 only 15 science-fiction television series have featured black women in lead roles:

Less than 9% of Science-Fiction television series have featured black women as main characters. And that is assuming you were to count recurring characters who were usually tossed in the background.

This has improved a little with recurring black female characters in the most popular sci-fi TV series Heroes and Battlestar Gallactica. However, the exhaustive list from 2005 (after the jump) still makes a statement, that up until recently, black women didn't exist in the imagined future. Weird!

Perhaps TV execs didn't believe black audiences watched science fiction? Just for some balance, see the List of black actors in science fiction film and TV on wikipedia.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Actors_in_Science_Fiction_Film_and_TV

Recent TV sci-fi heroines to note: Simone Deveaux played by Tawny Cypress in Heroes Season II (200&); Monica Dawson played by Dana Davis in Heroes Season II (2007); Anastasia Dualla played by Kandyse McClure in Battlestar Gallactica.


HEROES -- NBC Series -- Pilot -- Pictured: (l-r) Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura, Ali Larter as Niki Sanders, Noah Gray-Cabey as Micah Sanders, Leonard Roberts as D.L Hawkins, Milo Ventimiglia as Peter Petrelli, Adrian Pasdar as Nathan Petrelli, Hayden Panettiere as Clair Bennet, Sendhil Ramamurthy as Mohinder Suresh, Greg Grunberg as Matt Parkman, Santiago Cabrera as Isaac Mendez, Tawny Cypress as Simone Deveraux -- NBC Photo: Mitch Haaseth.