U.S. president Barack Obama weighs in on Oscars diversity row

Hillary Clinton – who is running for president in the whitest Democratic party contest in years – says that the 2016 Academy Awards are too white and that the motion pictures association that picks nominees has to “catch up with our reality” on racial diversity.

“It just raises the issue of the lack of equality and the level of sensitivity that sometimes needs to be displayed in order to say when we do get to this point where we display the idea that all men are created equal”.

Mr Obama said the film industry should do what others practised – “look for talent and provide opportunity to everybody”.

In reaction to the controversial lineup, famous Hollywood celebrities announced that they will boycott this year’s ceremony which is slated to be held on February 28. The overwhelmingly white, male organization-troubled by its rapidly declining power in an ever-evolving world-released a press release this week, after the Oscar nominations provoked outrage over the exclusion of black and brown artists.

“And I think the Oscar debate is really just an expression of this broader issue”. “The very people who voted for those Oscars are now being accused of being the roadblocks to the diversity the academy now seems committed to”, he wrote in an e-mail. The academy also set a goal to double minority and female members by 2020.

William Goldstein, a composer and longtime academy member, chastised the academy in a Los Angeles Times editorial for “capitulating to political correctness” while missing the bigger picture.

The lack of diverse nominations has caused some high profile actors of colours to boycott next month ceremony, including actress Jada Pinkett Smith and award-winning director Spike Lee. “But the change is not coming as fast as we would like”, Isaacs said last week.

“We are of a different generation – we lived through the black power movement – so we moved on”, She adds, “I’m disturbed by it all, but we gotta remember: the Oscars is one night”. A week later, the academy’s board issued a statement that outlined a “series of substantive changes” that were clearly aimed at staunching the cutting criticism. “Hopefully we’re on our way and will get there”.