A Sea of White: The Oscars and Lack of Representation

By Sierra Wolff

Jada Pinkett-Smith. Will Smith. Spike Lee. Mark Ruffalo. These are just a few names on an increasing list of celebrities boycotting this year’s Academy Awards.

For the second straight year, the Academy has no nominations for people of color in the big categories. The Academy itself has a historic background lacking in diversity, but the larger issue at hand comes from within the film industry.

When you look at a film like Straight Outta Compton, it is hard to see it lacking any real nominations when it was one of the best films of the summer and received a great deal of critical acclaim.

David Oyelowo, who starred in Selma and was left out of the nominations for Best Actor at last year’s awards, states that the Academy “doesn’t reflect me and it doesn’t reflect this nation.”

Since 1929, only seven percent of the awards for Best Actor have gone to a black nominee. That breaks down to around 32 African American winners out of nearly 3,000 winners since the first awards show. The first award to an African American was the award for Best Supporting Actress went to Hattie McDaniel for her role in Gone with the Wind. The award was presented to her in a segregated hotel away from the ceremony.

The first woman to win Best Actress did not come until Halle Berry took the award in 2002. This was the same year that Denzel Washington won the award for Best Actor, the first African American male since Sidney Poitier had done so in 1963. The most recent African American to receive a nomination in one of the big categories was Lupita Nyong’o in 2014 for her supporting role in 12 Years a Slave (she won the award).

Within the Hispanic community, only one actor has ever won the award for Best Actor and that was Josѐ Ferrer in 1950. There has yet to be an actress of Latina decent to be nominated for the Best Actress award. Only one Asian woman, Merle Oberon, has ever received a nomination for Best Actress and that was in 1935. There has also only ever been one Asian woman to win the award for Best Supporting Actress which was awarded in 1957 to Miyoshi Umeki. Finally, 1985 was the most recent time that we have seen an Asian male win an award which was Haing S. Ngor for Best Supporting Actor.

American Indians are completely ignored within the Academy.

What this history tells us is that the lack of diversity within the Oscar race in the big categories is not a new thing. It is, however, more prominent today because of how open our culture has become.

A large part of the issue regarding this lack of diversity in the nominations comes down to who is in the Academy that gets to vote. The Academy breaks down into 17 branches with one branch for each of the categories. These branches all vote within their category and then will collectively vote Best picture.

In order to become a member of the Academy, one must have the backing of at least two current members or have previously been nominated for an award. From there, the Board of Governors decides who becomes a member.

The current status of the Academy members is predominately white. In 2012, it was found that 94 percent of the members were white with 77 percent of that group being males. Only three percent of the Academy members were black men and women.

When we look to the history of film, the disparity in relation to minorities is clearly present. D.W. Griffith’s film from 1915, The Birth of the Nation is considered to be the cornerstone for the films we have today yet it a film glorifying extreme racism. While the film Gone with the Wind may have shown the first African American to receive an Oscar, it showed slavery in a pleasant form from a white perspective.

The lack of diversity that the Academy nominations show presents a deeper issue within the industry.

In 2014, Chris Rock penned an article discussing these issues in the industry. He talks about the struggle of finding a manger for current SNL cast member Leslie Jones for nearly five years. His overall point coming back to the fact that there are not many agencies with Hollywood that represent black actors in any form.

“It’s a white industry…and the black people they do hire tend to be the same person.”

This brings out the question of whether or not major scripts even go out to black actors. From the looks of it, the answer is no.

The current president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs has proposed a solution to the lack of diversity entitled A2020. It is five year plan that will see the studios and the Academy working on programs that expands the hiring pool of top executives.

Even though five years seems like a long time, many point out that the film industry is a slow one with stars and crews getting hired months and even years in advance. This means that change most likely will not occur right away.

The Academy and the lack of representation tells a lot about the film industry and society. Both are stuck in these cycles of white privilege that they are unaware of and they do not realize the systematic racism that is constantly at play. If there is a lack of minorities in film, playing major roles, then there is a lack of representation for young minorities watching film. Even just looking at Star Wars: the Force Awakens, I have seen and heard so many kids that are excited of Finn being black and Rey being a girl Jedi.

The Academy’s proposed fix to the lack of diversity is a good start to fixing things and hopefully it leads into changes within the industry that allow for more minorities to be present throughout the industry and the awards show.