Watch a Black Woman Show a White Man How Easy It Is to Support Equality

Sasheer Zamata teamed up with the ACLU to show there’s still a long way to go to achieve gender equality.

Oct 22, 2015·

Jennifer Swann is TakePart’s culture and lifestyle reporter.

With Supergirl premiering on Monday, a female-fronted Ghostbusters reboot garnering buzz for next summer, and Wonder Woman set to take flight on the big screen in 2017, it’s easy to get the impression that women are advancing in the media like never before.

But as Saturday Night Live comedian and ACLU Ambassador Sasheer Zamata sums it up in a new video for the civil rights organization: “There’s always room for improvement.”

The segment shows Zamata walking down the street with a white male coworker who argues, “If you just work hard enough, anyone can get ahead.” All the while, he remains oblivious as Zamata gets catcalled and harassed, stopped and frisked by the police, and bombarded with mixed media messages about body image and lifestyle choices.

“You may struggle, but you should still realize that our playing fields are unequal,” Zamata says to her blissfully ignorant buddy as she proceeds to school him about why his race, class, and gender give him an unequal advantage. “But that’s OK,” she says. “What you can control is how you use that privilege. You can use it to help others.”

The actor found herself at the center of a debate about race and gender in media when she was hired for SNL last year following widespread criticism of the show’s lack of cast diversity. One need only look at Jennifer Lawrence’s push to expose the gender wage gap and the typecasting of female actors of color to understand that sexism and racial discrimination haven’t disappeared from Tinseltown.

It’s not just Hollywood—the gender gap persists in politics, sports, and media around the world. Just half of women of working age are participating in the global labor force, compared with 77 percent of men, according to a United Nations report released Monday. Not only that, but the report also found that women comprise just 22 percent of parliament members and 18 percent of appointed ministers around the world. No country achieved parity for women’s representation as corporate managers, legislators, and senior officials.

The ACLU video was produced as part of its Women’s Rights Project, founded by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1972 with the mission of advancing the human rights of women, often through public education, political advocacy, and legal action.

It comes on the heels of the ACLU’s highly publicized campaign urging federal and state authorities to investigate hiring discrimination against women directors in Hollywood. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched its investigation in October.