Emmy 2016 Awards: The Most Diverse Emmys Ever. Finally. – The Daily Beast

Airing a little more than half a year after the Oscars, which famously embarrassed Hollywood while exposing our culture’s institutionalized racial biases, failed to nominate a single actor of color for the second year in a row, the Emmy Awards arrived Sunday night with a record number of diverse nominees.

Eighteen of the nominees for acting awards this year were people of color, and for the first time in the show’s 68-year history, performers of color were nominated in every leading acting category.

“The Emmys are so diverse this year, the Oscars are now telling people we are one of their closest friends,” Kimmel continued to joke, taking the piss out of the otherwise very serious conversation that’s lit up the zeitgeist over the deplorable state of diversity in media over the last few years.

Whatever the word you prefer—diversity, normalization (Shonda’s favorite), inclusivity (Ava DuVernay’s preference), or representation (my pick)—the fact that we’re even at a stage where a white guy in a suit is poking fun at the debate insinuates how important the discussion is.

Should we be past the point where we chart progress in awards milestones? That is, the firsts, the records, the groundbreaking achievements? Yes. But in acknowledging them and celebrating them, hopefuly we make room for progress. And Sunday night at the Emmys? Progress was made.

Sure, it was funny when Kimmel, during his opening monologue, had nominees of color reach out to a white nominee to thank them for their bravery. (It’s hard to nail this tone of joke, and we must give Kimmel credit for getting it right on the head.)

But it was funny and important when Alan Yang, from Tawainese parents, alongside Aziz Ansari, whose parents are from India, accepted their award for Best Writing in a Comedy Series.

“There’s 17 million Asian Americans in this country and there’s 17 million Italian Americans. They have The Godfather, Goodfellas, Rocky, The Sopranos. We got Long Duck Dong,” Yang said, shaming all of our opportunity blindspots and institutionalized cultural (even if unintended) reductivism and, yes, racism in only five seconds.

 “We’ve got a long way to go,” Yang said, with one final plea: “Asian parents out there, do me a favor, just a couple of you. Give your kids cameras instead of violins.”