Color Of Change Hollywood

Overview

Color Of Change Hollywood is the entertainment industry division of Color Of Change, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit racial justice organization with 1.7 million members. Founded in 2008, Color Of Change is the largest online racial justice organization in the United States. The Hollywood division, operating from hollywood.colorofchange.org, conducts research, runs accountability campaigns, and consults on scripted television to change how Black people and issues affecting Black communities are represented across film, television, and streaming.

The organization is not a labor union or a guild. It does not represent workers in collective bargaining. It is an external civil rights advocacy group that uses research, public pressure, and industry relationships to push studios, networks, and platforms toward racial equity in hiring, content, and business practices. This external position lets Color Of Change run public accountability campaigns that industry-internal diversity organizations cannot, because those organizations depend on maintaining relationships with the same companies they would need to call out.

The Interim Executive Director is Portia Allen-Kyle. The organization's 1.7 million members can be mobilized for petitions, shareholder actions, and public pressure campaigns targeting specific media companies.

Normalizing Injustice Research Series

Color Of Change's most significant research output is the Normalizing Injustice report series, produced in collaboration with the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center. The first report, published in January 2020, analyzed 353 episodes from 26 scripted crime series from the 2017-2018 season. It found that the crime TV genre, the primary way tens of millions of Americans learn about the criminal justice system, systematically normalized police misconduct, rendered racism invisible, and was written and produced almost entirely by white men.

Normalizing Injustice 2, released in November 2025, expanded the scope dramatically. The report analyzed 71 first-run crime-related TV shows that aired between August 2020 and December 2021 across 22 networks and 9 parent corporations. Researchers coded 721 complete episodes (549 hours of content) and tracked 5,934 variables across 370 distinct coding metrics per episode. Contributors included The Representation Project, UCLA, the LIFT Project, Michigan State University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The 2025 report introduced the Copaganda Index, a proprietary scoring system built from 17 weighted metrics across 5 categories. The Index quantifies how systematically a show depicts police and the justice system in a one-sided, uncritical, propagandist way. Scores ranged from 4.2 to 200.7. Key findings:

• The 15 worst-scoring shows all exceeded 100 on the Copaganda Index. Chicago P.D., Mayor of Kingstown, and City on a Hill had the three worst scores.
• Paramount Global and NBCUniversal produced 24 of the 30 worst-scoring shows (80%) and 16 of the 17 very worst (94%).
• 30 of 35 shows in the worst half of rankings had overwhelmingly white creative leadership. Only 2 of 51 showrunner credits across the 39 worst-scoring shows went to non-white showrunners.
• Shows with greater racial diversity in creative leadership consistently scored better (less propagandistic) on the Index.
• 70% of all egregious wrongful actions by law enforcement characters across the genre were portrayed as acceptable, justified, or routine.

The full report is available at colorofchange.org/resources/normalizing-injustice-2.

#ChangeHollywood Initiative

In 2020, Color Of Change launched the #ChangeHollywood initiative in collaboration with actor-producer Michael B. Jordan and his production company Outlier Society. The initiative provides a concrete roadmap for individuals and organizations in the entertainment industry to take action toward racial justice. The roadmap centers on three recommendations:

1. Divest from the police: Stop using industry economic power to support police departments. Hire independent security firms for events and sets instead of using police. Stop contributions to police unions. Do not rely on police or pro-policing authorities to vet content about the criminal justice system.
2. Invest in anti-racist content and authentic Black stories: Integrate recommendations from the Normalizing Injustice report into portrayals of the criminal justice system. Fund independent racial justice content audits.
3. Invest in Black talent and careers: Create pathways for Black talent to rise in the industry. Fund anti-racist trainings. Commit to adopting specific recommendations from workplace audits.

The initiative includes resources such as directories of anti-racist trainers and racial justice auditors, templates for inclusion riders and contract additions, and a hiring directory. Conversations about commitments began with companies including WME and Endeavor Content (now CAA Media Finance).

Consulting and Content Work

Color Of Change Hollywood consults on scripted television projects at any stage of development. The organization briefs writers on issues including criminal justice, gentrification, and Black family dynamics. It has collaborated with ABC (Grey's Anatomy), Netflix (Seven Seconds, The Red Line, Blindspotting), HBO (Surviving R. Kelly), and A&E, among others.

The organization also runs accountability campaigns targeting specific content decisions. Past campaigns include persuading Disney not to alter Princess Tiana's appearance in Wreck-It Ralph 2, getting Simon and Schuster to stop publishing Linda Fairstein's crime novels after When They See Us aired, and the successful campaign to cancel COPS on FOX (the show later moved to Paramount Network and then Spike).

What Filmmakers Should Know

For producers and showrunners, Color Of Change Hollywood offers free consulting on scripts, rough cuts, and storylines related to Black characters and racial justice themes. The organization can be contacted through hollywood.colorofchange.org. Consulting engagements range from brief script reviews to ongoing writers' room partnerships.

For studios and platforms, Color Of Change's 1.7 million-member base means that public diversity commitments are tracked against actual hiring and representation outcomes. The Normalizing Injustice research provides empirical data that press, investors, and policymakers can reference. The Copaganda Index in particular gives the organization a quantifiable tool for evaluating specific shows and holding parent companies accountable.

For filmmakers developing content that involves criminal justice themes, the Normalizing Injustice 2 report and its Copaganda Index provide specific, data-backed guidance on narrative patterns to avoid. The report identifies 17 specific metrics across 5 categories that contribute to propagandistic portrayals. Reviewing these metrics before developing a crime-related project can help writers and producers avoid the patterns the report documents.

Color Of Change does not charge for consulting. It is not a union and does not negotiate wages, working conditions, or collective bargaining agreements. Its leverage comes from research credibility, member mobilization, and public pressure rather than from labor contracts.

See Also

For complementary research on gender representation in screen content, see Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in this directory. For industry diversity programming, see Women in Film (WIF) and Array Alliance in this directory. For budgeting inclusive productions and estimating labor costs across departments, use the Indie Film Budget Calculator.