The apparent lack of racially diverse nominees for the Oscars shouldn’t come as any surprise. Historically, nearly every award show from the Oscars to the Screen Actors Guild release predominantly white nominations, according to a blog post on The Economist website.
This year, black actors and films were overlooked by the academy. Blockbuster hits such as “Creed” starring Michael B. Jordan and “Straight Outta Compton,” a telling biopic rooted in the underground 1980s rap scene were acknowledged, but not for their black actors. All 20 of this year’s nominated actors and actresses are white.
Celebrities such as Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee have taken to social media to critique the academy for their lack of diverse nominees, calling for a complete boycott of the Oscars until the lack of nonwhite faces is addressed and fixed.
On Jan. 18, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Pinkett Smith released her official statement.
“It’s our time now to make the change,” she said in a video published on her Facebook account.
Many actors have responded to the boycott, including Charlotte Rampling, one of the nominees for Best Actress in this year’s awards. Rampling is nominated for her role in “45 Years.” She said in an interview on Friday that the boycott is “racist against whites.”
Actor Michael Caine, who also weighed in on Friday, advised black actors to “be patient.”
“You can’t vote for an actor because he’s black,” Caine said, “You’ve got to give a good performance.”
It seems that both Caine and Rampling are white actors comfortably oblivious in their white privilege, refusing to acknowledge the fact that an all-white Oscars isn’t anything out of the norm.
Since Pinkett Smith announced her intent to boycott the Oscars, many black actors have been pushed into the spotlight and urged to comment on the boycott and lack of diversity in the academy. The result is a mixed bag. While prominent figures such as Whoopi Goldberg empathize with the lack of diversity in the nominees, she and other public figures refused to join the boycott.
Social media is showing full support in response of the boycott, reviving the still popular #OscarsSoWhite hashtag from last year and this year’s #BoycottTheOscars. On the other hand, Pinkett Smith’s boycott is garnering little support from her fellow colleagues.
ABC airs the award show and has already sold all its advertising time, and none of the sponsors are backing down. The academy is sweating under the pressure of the boycott regardless. In the past week since the boycott had been announced, academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has began talking about change.
Isaacs is changing the rules of membership and is committing to doubling the number of women and minority members by 2020. Members of the academy are reluctant to give up their membership perks and are not taking these changes lightly. Free and exclusive access to movies is hard to give up. There is also talk of expanding the categories to include more nominees.
“It’s the right thing to do,” says Isaacs.
Whether or not these changes will actually stick is yet to be determined.
