This year has been an eventful year for late night talk shows. Jay Leno retired, Jimmy Fallon got promoted and Seth Meyers now has his own show. However one thing that has remained unchanged is the lack of diversity in the late night scene.

Of the 14 American late night talk shows only one host is a woman, Chelsea Handler, the first lady of Late Night. 

Plus the vast majority of the hosts are white men, with Arsenio Hall being the only person of color to host his own show. There’s also Andy Cohen who’s gay.

The country we live in is diverse. It’s not unreasonable to expect comedy, as a form of public entertainment, to reflect that a little. It is not a ridiculous request.

“Saturday Night Live” also ran into a diversity issue earlier this year. They had no female black cast members, which limited the number and quality of sketches they could do. They addressed this by hiring Sasheer Zamata.

Unfortunately the lack of diversity in late night comedy isn’t fixed by hiring one person. And no, you do not get double diversity points for hiring someone who belongs to two underrepresented groups. I am not saying we need to fire the white men and force feed everyone diversity. However, we need to question this lack of diversity in our late night hosts. 

I love John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Fallon and Meyers. Fallon is one of my favorite SNL veterans, but he is ranked behind Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig to me.

While these men are good at their jobs we need more women and more people of color, because white men are not universally funny. 

There are many hilarious women who would be qualified to have successful late night talk shows but the first woman who always comes to my mind is “The Daily Show’s” Jessica Williams.

I would suggest she take over the show for Stewart once he retires but that won’t happen soon and I would miss that funny little man. However, Williams is one of the best parts of the show.

It is called late night television, not late white television.

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