“Begging for acknowledgement, or even asking, diminishes dignity and diminishes power”. They don’t understand how fast America can fall out of love with them: see O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, and Bill Cosby. “And let’s do us, differently”.
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Both had pledged not to attend the Oscars this year.
I don’t think that’s fair. That’s why we’re great.
Most important, not all the Blacks are men and not all of the women are white. The Academy reflects the industry, reflects Hollywood. So when I look at the series of nominations of the Academy, it’s not reflecting that beauty. What’s more, I’m sure that every one of them truly believes that. “He should make Chris Rock jokes about it all night”.
Clooney was off by a year, but a number of blacks were nominated in 2005 – five of the 20 acting nominations went to black actors that year. And Let’s Not Even Get Into The Other Branches. Then there’s situations like the upcoming Gods of Egypt, wherein characters of Egyptian descent are portrayed by mainstream, white Hollywood actors. We can’t act?! WTF!!’
Last year, one of the notable snubs was David Oyelowo, who received praises for his turn as the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.in Selma. There’s no reason for an industry to go out of their way to change if the industry is getting the recognition they seek from their status quo operations. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
In the 1960s the legacy studio system that had dominated Hollywood since its early days began to lose steam as audience tastes and demographics changed. People, The Truth Is We Ain’t In Those Rooms And Until Minorities Are, The Oscar Nominees Will Remain Lilly White. “You could probably line up all the A-list Black actresses out there [and] they probably don’t make what one A-list white woman makes in one film”. Their bubble only protects them as long as they have the approval of the people who put them in it. Once this became a big story the conservative media, trotted out their stable of black faces to refute the claims of racism.
“People who care about racial and gender justice really should care a lot about the [Oscar] nomination process and what’s valued in Hollywood”, said Phillip Atiba Goff, an associate professor of social psychology at UCLA specializing in race issues. In the press release itself it came off as a bit of hand-patting – reassurance that these sort of things happen all the time, so nobody should get too upset – but Hollywood has had to deal with this kind of situation before.
But Darnel Hunt, head of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American studies, cautions against viewing gestures of diversity as representations of deeper progress.
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Charlotte Rampling, who’s nominated this year for her role in a movie you haven’t seen, made the mistake of saying the #OscarsSoWhite boycott campaign is racist. “I think employment is a bigger problem than awards, actually. And all of a sudden, you feel like we’re moving in the wrong direction”. The child soldier drama “Beasts of No Nation”, which provided the much-praised but un-nominated performance by Idris Elba, came from Netflix. You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to vote for him. By the way, we’re talking about African Americans.
