THOSE looking for hints of racial tone-deafness on the second episode of “Girls,” last Sunday on HBO, wouldn’t have been let down. In an early scene Hannah, played by the show’s creator, Lena Dunham, and her nonboyfriend Adam (Adam Driver) have sex; as they’re finishing, Adam promises to make the “continent of Africa on” Hannah’s arm, a vexing intersection of eroticism and geography. Later Jessa (Jemima Kirke), nervously facing down an abortion, insists, “I want to have children with many different men, of different races,” as if they were trinkets to be collected, like key chains or snow globes.


Of course none of those men are to be found on “Girls,” which set off a media-class kerfuffle upon its debut this month, assailed — though with concern, not vitriol — for failing to depict much beyond the wages of white privilege.


Call it progress. Whiteness is too often invisible on television, so much the norm that it no longer begs evaluation, and for whatever advances “Girls” makes in expanding the range of women on television, and the sorts of conversations they’re permitted to have, it certainly lacks for other forms of diversity. All the central figures — four young women scavenging New York for bits of love — are white. So far nonwhite characters are tertiary at best, with just a handful of lines among them.


But cloistered though it may be, “Girls” is a symptom, not the disease. The debate over the show is related to, but not a full picture of, greater debates about race and television, about representation and power, and about reception. The vigor of the response has far more to do with what’s not shown on television as a whole than what is or is not shown on “Girls,” and also with who’s chosen to pay attention.


Television is nowhere near diverse enough — not in its actors, its writers or its show runners. The problems identified by critics of “Girls” are systemic, traceable to network executives who greenlight shows and shoot down plenty of others. It’s at that level that diversity stands or falls.


And “Girls” is hardly alone in its whiteness. Far more popular shows like “Two and a Half Men” or “How I Met Your Mother” blithely exist in a world that rarely considers race. They’re less scrutinized, because unlike the Brooklyn-bohemian demimonde of “Girls,” the worlds of those shows are ones that writers and critics — the sort who both adore and have taken offense at “Girls” — have little desire to be a part of. White-dominant television has almost always been the norm. Why would “Girls” be any different?


It is far less egregious than, say, its distant Brooklyn cousin, “2 Broke Girls,” which may have a more diverse cast but paints its minority characters (the diner boss, Han, and the cashier, Earl) with awful, gauche strokes. And it’s mystifying that there was never an outcry over “Eastbound & Down,” which survived three seasons on HBO on a diet of ethnic stereotypes, potty humor and post-irony. The overtness of that show — Kenny Powers riding a Confederate-flag boogie board, and so on — was its defense. It was hiding in plain sight, painting its protagonists as backward but lovable.


HBO certainly knows how to do better. “How to Make It in America,” recently canceled after two seasons, tried to capture New York’s polyglot downtown scene; it failed for being dull, not undiverse. And of course there was “The Wire.” But the criticism of “Girls” reflects how television is increasingly perceived, which is as a public trust of sorts. That’s at least in part the thinking behind the recent lawsuit filed against ABC and the producers of “The Bachelor” by two black men who were rejected early in the application process and charged racism. Television, the men are effectively arguing, should be doing the hard work of diversity. Of course it doesn’t.


It’s troubling that there are almost no minority romantic heroes in network prime time, be they on scripted or reality programming. In fact there are probably a greater number of white characters with bumbling racial politics. NBC’s Thursday-night comedy bloc alone features two key offenders: Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock,” who passes off harsh stereotypes under the guise of extreme class privilege, filtered through a veil of knowing irony that permeates the whole show; and Pierce Hawthorne on “Community,” a bumbling out-of-touch galoot whose backward sentiments on race aren’t softened a bit by the diversity of his circle of friends.