Lack of Diversity in Nominations Has Black Actors Boycotting the Oscars

By Alexis Evans | January 20, 2016

When the Academy Awards revealed its nominations last week for the 88th Oscars, people couldn’t help but notice that all of the actors and actresses named have something in common:

All of them are white.

That’s right, for the second year in a row not a single person of color was nominated for any of the four highly coveted acting categories–and the industry isn’t happy about it.

Nominations are #OscarsSoWhite all over again 😑 https://t.co/o6MImkEfYR pic.twitter.com/vHsB1orcLv

— Mashable (@mashable) January 14, 2016

The diversity shutout spawned critics to start the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite to voice their disapproval, and on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday Monday, filmmaker Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith both announced in separate statements that they would be boycotting the February 28th ceremony.

In an Instagram post Lee explained that both he and his wife could not support the “lily white” awards, writing:

How Is It Possible For The 2nd Consecutive Year All 20 Contenders Under The Actor Category Are White? And Let’s Not Even Get Into The Other Branches. 40 White Actors In 2 Years And No Flava At All. We Can’t Act?! WTF!!

Spike Lee will not be attending the Oscars because #OscarsSoWhite pic.twitter.com/gODpStApjv — Black Ballad (@Blackballaduk) January 18, 2016

Lee continued:

Dr. King Said “There Comes A Time When One Must Take A Position That Is Neither Safe, Nor Politic, Nor Popular But He Must Take It Because Conscience Tells Him It’s Right”.

Pinkett Smith, whose husband Will Smith was not nominated for his leading performance in the NFL head injury biopic “Concussion,” echoed her disapproval over the votes in a Facebook video message.

The actress asked that people join her in boycotting the awards saying,

Maybe it is time that we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities and our programs and we make programs for ourselves that acknowledge us in ways that we see fit, that are just as good as the so-called ‘mainstream’ one.

She then added,

Begging for acknowledgement, or even asking, diminishes dignity and diminishes power. And we are a dignified people, and we are powerful.

Fellow actors Idris Elba, who was snubbed for his acclaimed role in “Beasts of No Nation,” and David Oyelowo, who failed to get an Oscar nomination last year for his portrayal of MLK in “Selma,” also joined in on criticizing the all-white line up. But not everyone supported Lee and Pinkett Smith’s stand against the Academy.

Actress Janet Hubert, who played Will Smith’s mom on the hit show “Fresh Prince,” slammed her former costar’s wife in her own video response, calling Pinkett Smith’s boycott ironic.

Hubert took some nasty shots at the couple saying,

You ain’t Barack and Michelle Obama. And y’all need to get over yourselves. You have a huge production company that you only produce your friends and family and yourself. So you are a part of Hollywood, you are part of the system that is unfair to other actors. So get real.

On Monday, the Academy’s African American President Cheryl Boone Isaacs shared in a statement that she is “heartbroken and frustrated” over the lack of diversity. Boone promised to work toward reviewing the organization’s membership recruitment in order to ensure diversity is a priority moving forward, but as Oyelowo pointed out, the votes are not her fault.

Since the voters are made up of predominantly white males, it should come as no surprise that individuals getting the most nominations across the board happen to be both white and male. If the Academy can’t begin to accurately reflect the nation’s diversity, the integrity of its awards will continue to be called into question. With the award show still weeks away, it will be interesting to see how the boycott affects the night.