The world is all atwitter about the “lily-white Oscars.” Because, for the second consecutive year, the 20 nominees for best performances are all white.
I commented on this racial snub when it happened last year. And, frankly, everything I wrote back then remains as relevant today. Most notably, that commentary, titled “Oscar Snubs Selma. Good,” January 16, 2015, includes the following excerpt.
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The increasingly popular Huffington Post, which too often panders to blacks, promptly blared – “White Gold: Whitest Oscars since ’98” – as if blacks are entitled to a quota of nominations, regardless of the merit of their work.
You’d never know that, just last year, this same Academy, whose over 6,000 voting members are 94 percent white (77 percent male, and average age 62), not only nominated blacks in most major categories, but also awarded the most-coveted Oscar, for best picture, to a “black movie,” 12 Years a Slave.
In fact, members went beyond tokenism by awarding an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress to black Lupita Nyong’o and another for Best Adapted Screenplay to black John Ridley.
Frankly, it has become farcical to watch race-baiting activists, like Reverend Al Sharpton, perform racial tantrums every time this lily-white Academy fails to meet some de facto quota of black nominations.
It would’ve occurred to well-intentioned civil rights activists long ago to negotiate behind closed doors to better integrate the Academy. Failing that, genuine black pride would’ve compelled them to simply establish their own version of the Oscars. They could’ve named their Academy Award of Merit, the Leroys – given that there’s an ‘Uncle Leroy’ in practically every black family…
Folklore has it that Margaret Herrick, the Academy director during the 1930s, had an uncle named Oscar whose features seemed to have been used to mold the famous golden statue. Further, that this resemblance inspired Academy staff to begin calling their Award of Merit, the Oscars — in homage to her uncle.
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All the same, I would be remiss not to comment on this year’s racial snub, especially given the backlash Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee set off.
Smith triggered it Monday when she called for a boycott of the Oscars. Spike Lee seconded that (e)motion by declaring his intent to be otherwise entertained.
Except that Lee betrayed how ill-advised this was when he began insisting, just 36 hours later, that he never called for a boycott. Suffice it to know that there’s a reason the mainstream media reported on his and Jada’s statements as follows:
Invoking the Rev. Martin Luther King’s legacy on his birthday, two prominent African-Americans announced Monday that they will boycott this year’s Academy Awards over a lack of diversity among nominees.
Filmmaker Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith posted separate messages Monday saying they would not be attending the February 28 ceremony. The Oscars have drawn criticism a after an all-white slate of major nominees was announced Thursday for the second year in a row.
(CNN, January 19, 2016)
Meanwhile, George Clooney is leading a viral chorus of stars venting outrage about Hollywood “going in the wrong direction.” Significantly, though, none of them is saying anything about boycotting the Oscars. And that’s a good thing.
After all, boycotting the Academy Awards because they’re so white is rather like boycotting the BET Awards because they’re so black. More to the point, blacks boycotting the Academy Awards would have about as much impact as blacks boycotting the Republican National Convention.
This is not the NBA, NFL, KFC, or Burger King – whose bottom line depends on blacks either playing or paying. Nobody will miss you. What’s more, I would not be at all surprised if the ironic impact of this backlash is that this year’s broadcast becomes the most watched in history.
Not to mention that Lee and Smith do not inspire solidarity … the way MLK and Rosa Parks did. Instead, they race bait and alienate … the way Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters do.
With respect to Smith, this was thrown into sharp relief when Janet Hubert took to social media to respond to her call. Hubert co-starred with her husband Will on the hit sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996). Here, in part, is what “Aunt Viv” said:
Just because the world doesn’t go the way that you want it to go doesn’t mean that you can go out and then you start asking people to stand up and say we can overcome…
You have a huge production company that you only produce your friends, your family and yourself…
You are a part of the system that is unfair to other actors.
(Huffington Post, January 19, 2016)
Reports are that, in the early days of The Fresh Prince, Hubert lobbied Will to use his clout to get more pay per show for all cast members; you know, like actors on “White shows” do. According to her, he refused, saying in effect, I got mine, y’all get yours.
Therefore, Hubert can be forgiven for acting like a woman (still) scorned, especially because this seems to be the first starring role she’s had since then. But there’s no denying the merit of her response. I, for one, believe her charge that Jada would not be calling for this boycott if Will had been nominated for Concussion – even if he were the only black nominated in any category.
As it happens, Will unwittingly betrayed their self-serving motivation during an interview with ABC’s News earlier today. He claimed that he’s joining his wife’s boycott because he’s concerned about the message all-white nominees sends to little black children.
Which raises this obvious question: Why the hell wasn’t he concerned about this message last year? The obvious answer, of course, is that he had no skin in the game. As Hubert knows all too well, Will is only about getting his….
With respect to Lee, I have condemned him over the years for the very kind of rash reaction to legitimate racial issues he demonstrated in this case. For example, I refer you to “Spike Lee vs. Clint Eastwood Over No Blacks in Hollywood War Movies,” June 10, 2008. Enough said.
Again, my commentary on last year’s snub was prescient and seemed pretty comprehensive. Yet here are brief comments on three subjects it did not cover:
It’s the Movies, Stupid
Given that Monday was the MLK holiday, it’s understandable that this backlash has been littered with allusions to the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. But the proper corollary would be a boycott not of the Oscars, but of the movies that are so white.
I referred above to George Clooney taking a leading role in speaking out against this racial snub – as he is wont to do. Therefore, it might surprise you to learn that “MoviesSoWhite” include many that Clooney himself produced.
Except that, if he’s comfortable casting his wedding of the century “so white,” it’s hardly surprising that he’d be equally so casting his movies as such:
It’s just that Clooney is a vocal, proud, and celebrated Hollywood liberal. So, if even he could have a wedding party as lily-white as his apparently was, the sad fact is that the wedding hour on Saturday might be the second most segregated hour in America.
After all, from Hollywood to Washington and even throughout Africa, no white celebrity appeared to have nurtured more cross-racial/cultural friendships than he. Yet, while it’s understandable that Barack Obama had far more pressing matters, it strains credulity that every one of his other black ‘friends’ was otherwise occupied.
(“Clooney Nuptials Show Saturday Weddings as Segregated as Sunday Services,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 27, 2014)
Given this, one could fairly assert that George Clooney venting outrage about the lack of blacks in Hollywood is like Donald Trump doing so about the lack of Hispanics in the Republican Party
Still, it was Matt Damon who exposed the root cause of the Oscars being so white. It happened last September when he famously asserted that there’s nothing wrong with having no blacks in position to greenlight movies. He insisted that all would be h[o]nky dory, so long as white studio heads, producers, and directors make an effort to cast blacks in their films (as tokens?). #White Hollywood hypocrites?
Oscar’s First Black President
In theory, Cheryl Boone Isaacs becoming head of the Academy is even more remarkable than Barack Obama becoming president of the United States. To say nothing of how improbable it is for a black to head a major studio. More to the point, I fear her promise to “bring much-needed diversity to Hollywood” will prove even more feckless than Obama’s to bring much-needed civility to Washington.
Reports are that Isaacs has proposed new rules to ensure noticeable and sustainable change by next year. But I can think of nothing more anathema to the artistic license and freedom that defines Hollywood than requiring Academy members to vote like North Korean bureaucrats.
After all, the only way Isaacs can fulfill her promise is to impose a quota for black nominees, which only a rash fool like Lee would recommend.
There’s also talk of increasing the number of nominees in each category. The expectation is that this would give black movies like Straight Outta Compton and black actors like Idris Elba a better shot at being nominated. But this would be tantamount to the farce of awarding “participation trophies,” which diminishes recognition of all achievement. Not to mention making a mockery of the real purpose of affirmative action.
Again, human nature being what it is, the only way to seed and grow diversity at the Oscars is to ensure diversity at every stage in the filmmaking process. This will lead organically to the Academy reflecting the demographics more of the American people than a Connecticut country club. With all due respect to Isaacs, this cannot be done in one year. But the silver lining in this backlash is that it presents this year as an unprecedented seeding season for diversity in Hollywood.
Oscar’s Black Host
The pressure on comedians hosting the Oscars to be funny is tremendous even under the best of circumstances – as Seth MacFarlane found out to his eternal shame. Therefore, the pressure on Chris Rock, with the black cloud of this backlash hanging over his head, must be unbearable.
First he had to deal with misguided calls to withdraw. Now he’s having to deal with race-based demands to use his platform as host to speak black truth to white power, which for many means cracking jokes about Hollywood being so white.
Never mind that there’s nothing Rock can say that these white folks haven’t already heard. Ironically, no less a person than Spike Lee preempted him in this respect just months ago, albeit he was under no pressure to be funny.
The occasion was the seventh annual Governors Awards, at which these same lily-white members of the Academy awarded Lee an honorary Oscar:
Everybody in here probably voted for Obama but when I go to offices, I see no black folks except for the brother man at the security who checks my name off the list as I go into the studio. … So we can talk ‘yabba yabba yabba’ but we need to have some serious discussion about diversity and get some flavor up in this. …
This industry is so behind sports it’s ridiculous.
(E News, November 15, 2015)
Really, what else is there for Rock to say – no matter how funny?
Clearly, the entitled racism white liberals in Hollywood assume is unforgivable. That must change, but I’m not holding my breath. Not least because I’ve been taking white liberals in Washington to task in similar fashion for years … to no avail. Commentaries like “Senator Kennedy Calls Bush’s Black Female Judicial Nominee an Ape,” June 7, 2005, “Hillary: Republicans Treating Democrats like Slaves,” January 23, 2006, and “VP Biden, Stop Your Dog-Whistling about Race…Now!” August 16, 2012, attest to this.
Nonetheless, I hope Rock does not take this race bait. Because nobody wants to tune in to a celebration of Hollywood, no matter how lily white, just to hear a rich black host bitching all night about how racist and unfair life is for rich black actors.
Besides, we all know that black comics rule when it comes to jokes about thuggish behavior among blacks in the hood. By the same token, and for the same reasons, I submit that white comics should rule when it comes to jokes about racism among whites in Hollywood, especially on this occasion.
In any event, there’s bound to be no shortage of stars looking to use this occasion to vent Oscars-So-White outrage, hoping for an additional 15 minutes of fame.
With that, I hope you enjoy the show. That is, unless you’re planning to join Will and Jada in their boycott by not even watching on TV. Yeah, right!
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* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Thursday, at 10:40 p.m.