Here we go again. The Oscars have once more picked an all-white group of acting nominees. The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag has returned with a vengeance. Everyone is pissed off.
The Oscars deserve lots of blame for this situation, but the problems go deeper than one awards show. It’s not just that movies like “Creed” or “Straight Outta Compton,” or actors like Michael B. Jordan or Will Smith were snubbed. It’s that, once you stop talking about “Creed” or “Straight Outta Compton” or Michael B. Jordan or Will Smith, you’re not left with much for the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to choose from. The film industry itself is unbelievably white—and unbelievably male. This is a very long-term trend—a 2015 UCLA study showed that 73.4 percent of all the characters in the top 100 movies of 2014 were white—and it’s not just black people getting stiffed. That UCLA study found that just under 5 percent of characters were Latino, despite the fact that Latinos have become possibly the most loyal moviegoing audience in the country. Academy voters should be ashamed for choosing an all-white field, but they should be equally ashamed to be part of an industry that so unerringly refuses to change.