Tagged: Oscars
in response to another #WhiteOut at the Oscars, Jada Pinkett-Smith boycotts the ceremony & asks people of Afrikan descent, “Have we now come to a new time and place, where we recognize that we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledgment or respect of ANY group?”
Go Jada!!!!! As she said: “We must stand in POWER.” Black actors and actresses, take note! Hollywood is merely exploiting you. It’s time for us to pull our resources together and do for self!
“Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher up you get the whiter it gets and this year’s Academy Awards will be yet another Rocky Mountain Oscars. Yet again, deserving Black actors and directors were ignored by the Academy – which reinforces the fact that there are few if any Blacks with real power in Hollywood. Being left out of Awards consideration is about more than just recognition for a job well done; winning an Oscar has long-lasting cultural and economic impacts.” — Al Sharpton
Of course I agree with Sharpton’s statement, but we all know that this problem isn’t new! What I find interesting is that when I tried to reach out to Sharpton, the NAACP and others about my case years ago, one of Sharpton’s aides said to me that he would only speak out about my case if he was getting paid. Whether I have their support or not, institutionalized racism in Hollywood will be eradicated!
Source: January 14, 2016. http://nationalactionnetwork.net/press/rev-al-sharpton-blasts-the-academy-of-motion-picture-arts-and-sciences-for-complete-lack-of-diversity-in-2016-oscar-nominations/.
“Questions about the academy’s diversity, or lack thereof, have persisted for years. In 1996, the Rev. Jesse Jackson organized nationwide protests over the absence of black and minority Oscar nominees, claiming it was evidence of ‘race exclusion and cultural violence’ in Hollywood.”
Source: John Horn, Nicole Sperling and Doug Smith. “Unmasking the Academy Oscar Voters Overwhelmingly White, Male.” Los Angeles Times. February 19, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/oscars/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html.
“Academy leaders including President Tom Sherak and Chief Executive Dawn Hudson said they have been trying to diversify the membership but that change is difficult because the film industry is not very diverse, and slow because the academy has been limiting membership growth for the last decade. ‘We absolutely recognize that we need to do a better job,’ said writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, a longtime academy governor. But ‘we start off with one hand tied behind our back…. If the industry as a whole is not doing a great job in opening up its ranks, it’s very hard for us to diversify our membership.'”
Source: John Horn, Nicole Sperling and Doug Smith. “Unmasking the Academy Oscar Voters Overwhelmingly White, Male.” Los Angeles Times. February 19, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/oscars/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html.
“To conduct the study, Times reporters spoke with thousands of academy members and their representatives — and reviewed academy publications, resumes and biographies — to confirm the identities of more than 5,100 voters — more than 89% of the voting members. Those interviews revealed varying opinions about the academy’s race, sex and age breakdown: Some members see it simply as a mirror of hiring patterns in Hollywood, while others say it reflects the group’s mission to recognize achievement rather than promote diversity. Many said the academy should be much more representative. The Times found that some of the academy’s 15 branches are almost exclusively white and male. Caucasians currently make up 90% or more of every academy branch except actors, whose roster is 88% white. The academy’s executive branch is 98% white, as is its writers branch. Men compose more than 90% of five branches, including cinematography and visual effects. Of the academy’s 43-member board of governors, six are women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs is the sole person of color.”
Source: John Horn, Nicole Sperling and Doug Smith. “Unmasking the Academy Oscar Voters Overwhelmingly White, Male.” Los Angeles Times. February 19, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/oscars/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html.
“About 37 million people tuned in to the Academy Awards last year, and a great deal rides on the show’s outcome. Winning a golden statuette can vault an actor to stardom, add millions to a movie’s box office and boost a studio’s prestige. Yet the roster of all 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a closely guarded secret….A Los Angeles Times study found that academy voters are markedly less diverse than the moviegoing public, and even more monolithic than many in the film industry may suspect. Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male, The Times found. Blacks are about 2% of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2%. Oscar voters have a median age of 62, the study showed. People younger than 50 constitute just 14% of the membership.”
Should this surprise anyone?
Source: John Horn, Nicole Sperling and Doug Smith. “Unmasking the Academy Oscar Voters Overwhelmingly White, Male.” Los Angeles Times. February 19, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/oscars/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html.
“It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.” — Patricia Arquette
Arquette made this statement backstage after winning for Best Supporting Actress at this year’s Oscars? Wtf?! I’m all for gender equality, but black people don’t owe white people [women included] ANYTHING! In fact, white women have been the biggest beneficiaries of the BLACK LED CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT and now she wants us to “fight for [them]” when many of the gains made for us have been eviscerated since the 1980s!?!? Smdh. GTFOH!
Source: Amanda Marcotte. “Patricia Arquette’s Feminism: Only For White Women.” Slate. February 23, 2015. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/02/23/patricia_arquette_on_pay_equality_insulting_to_feminism.html.
yes, Oscar’s origins are also African…
I just stumbled across this 2011 cover from The New Yorker by Ian Falconer. How ironic that this historically racist and racially biased industry known as Hollywood and the Academy — a group that has rarely acknowledged that achievements of blacks in film — modeled the Oscar figurine after the Egyptian [black] god known as Ptah.
Smdh!! No matter how hard they try, our history, tremendous contributions to civilization and overall greatness cannot and will no longer be diminished!!
“Before the [Oscar nominations] ceremony, it was expected that ‘Selma’ would be a strong favorite to be nominated for Best Director and Best Actor. But it was left out, along with every other black film, actor and director in the universe, not even obtaining a single nomination in any major category.”
Like Spike Lee said, FUCK the Oscars! And fuck this racist industry as well!
Source: David Miller. “Spike Lee on Racist Oscars: ‘Fuck Em.'” Your Black World. January 16, 2015. http://yourblackworld.net/2015/01/spike-lee-on-racist-oscars-fck-em/.
Me Against Iniquity: Understanding the Complexities of Global White Supremacy (Racism) Through The Eyes of an Unapologetically BLACK Intellectual 