Was Friends tone-deaf and white washed?

Who doesn’t love Friends? We’ve seen reruns of the show in English, Urdu, Hindi and even Punjabi. A show that apparently most of us can relate to, doesn’t really have anyone who looks even a bit like us.

Friends came out in 1994, about a group of six white and bizarrely privileged people living in New York, the most diverse city in the world. However, how often was it that we saw someone of color in the series?

How come none of the leads was even minutely related to any minority in America? Before, we start the argument that Friends was made in a time where racial representation wasn’t a norm; remember that the hugely successful show ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ started airing four years before Friends and it had normalized the conversation about race and color onscreen.

It took Friends six seasons to feature a black woman with a full name and somewhat of a character arc; before that, the customers at Central Perk and every background extra was white.

Perhaps yes, it was a different time back then and representation wasn’t common or appreciated by the masses. However, what’s somewhat disappointing is that after 27 years on the Reunion episode, no one was seemed to be willing to even mention the problematic parts of the show.

Friends left a huge impact on the world, it was watched by an average 25 million people every week; for a show of such reach and power, normalizing anything wouldn’t have been a tough stint. However, the writers chose to stick to the whiter, more convenient route; even though one of the creators himself is gay.

Times have changed, and its important to at least talk about the problems, rather than aimlessly laughing the at the often unfunny content of Friends.

What do you think?

This is just a point of view of one of our writers and we’d thought we should share it.