These are this year’s Oscars nominees. It is the least diverse group of nominees since 1998. And that’s something many are not happy with.
The Oscars were first aired in 1929 and since then just 7 percent of winners in the Best Actor category have been black men. If Common and John Legend win an Academy Award for Best Original Song on February 28th, it will only be the 32nd time in 87 years that a person of color has held a competitive Oscar on Hollywood’s biggest stage.
That’s 32 times out of more than 2,900 winners.
Last year, 43 million people watched the Academy Awards. This year it will reach more than 200 countries around the globe. For the past 87 years, the Oscars have been a celebration of filmmaking. However, the unplanned message award show sends is hard to miss: that white voices matter more than others.
“Here’s the deal: Most of us in the film community, across the board, work with people who we know, who we consider friends and family. If you use that as a barometer to look at the film world, it just shows you how segregated, xenophobic, sexist, racist and backwards we are as Americans in terms of how we deal with one another,” cinematographer Bradford Young, another snubbed member of Team “Selma” told The Huffington Post in an interview earlier this year. “I’m not throwing anybody under the bus for hiring who they hire, but if we’re honest with ourselves — for whatever it’s worth for the person who could actually admit it to themselves — we have a lot of work to do. If film sets are representations of the American public as a whole, which they’re supposed to be, then film crews haven’t moved out of the era that we see Martin Luther King fighting in during ‘Selma.'”
With actors and filmmakers of color being snubbed, many have spoken out about this years Oscars. Celebrities included Jada Pinkett Smith, Daniel Radcliffe, Danny DeVito, David Oyelowo, Don Cheadle, Gina Rodriguez, Ice Cube, Lupita Nyong’o and many others.
Pinkett Smith even contemplated boycotting the award show all together this year due to the lack of diversity in nominees.
This matter is being taken seriously by those in the Hollywood film community and those immediately involved with the Academy. Some, though, are making light and talking about this issue like SNL and other late night talk shows.
What does this mean for the entertainment industry now though? It’s in for a big change. There is a lot to be done to change filmaking in the years to come so this is no longer the norm.
The 88th Academy Awards will air on ABC on February 28th at 7 pm (EST).