More People of Color Were Nominated for Emmys in 2018 Than Ever Before

The total is double last year but trouble spots remain

Malcolm Venable July 13, 2018 at 6:18 p.m. PT

The nominations for the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards reflect a sizable jump in the number of people of color in the top categories: 38 at TV Guide's last count. That's not only more than double the number last year, but it also qualifies as the most nominations ever as it tops those from 2016, when 21 people of color were nominated across drama, comedy, movie/limited and guest categories. Good job, Emmy voters!

But let's not celebrate too much: there's still a lot of work to do. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Asian-Americans make up about 5.6 percent of the population, and they're also the fastest growing group, which makes it a travesty that Sandra Oh, who is actually Canadian, is the first and only person of Asian descent to have been nominated for lead actress in a drama.

Emmys 2018: See the Full List of Nominees Here

Meanwhile, six actors of Latin descent, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez, received nominations this year, a paltry sum considering the hundreds of shows in the running and that most all said performers were concentrated in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. As UCLA's Hollywood Diversity Report points out, minorities are still consistently underrepresented on screen in a way that doesn't reflect the actual makeup of the country and fails to catch up to viewers' overall watching habits, which regularly prove that everyone -- white, brown, black, everyone -- tends to gravitate toward shows with diverse casts.

Penelope Cruz (The Assassination of Gianni Versace), Sandra Oh (Killing Eve) and Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us) — Penelope Cruz (*The Assassination of Gianni Versace*), Sandra Oh (*Killing Eve*) and Sterling K. Brown (*This Is Us*)
FX, Sophie Mutevelian/BBC America, Ron Batzdorff/NBC

But this year's nominations prove that progress is being made, even if some of the same names and faces are in the running. People of color are spread evenly across categories as opposed to being concentrated in just comedy or reality; almost every category has a person of color eligible to win an Emmy and some had more than one. Check out the full list below and last year's list of PoC in main categories here.

People of color nominated for Emmys in major categories in 2018:

Sterling K. Brown and Ron Cephas Jones, This Is Us

Tracee Ellis Ross, Anthony Anderson and Wanda Sykes, black-ish

Donald Glover, Zazie Beetz, Katt Williams and Brian Tyree Henry, Atlanta

Leslie Jones, Kenan Thompson, Tiffany Haddish, Saturday Night Live

Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Jeffrey Wright and Thandie Newton,Westworld

Samira Wiley and Kelly Jenrette, The Handmaid's Tale

Regina King, Seven Seconds

RuPaul,RuPaul's Drag Race

W. Kamau Bell, United Shades of America: With W. Kamau Bell

Issa Rae, Insecure