All white field for Oscar acting categories sparks blowback

The original Hollywood blacklist denied employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, and other USA entertainment professionals due to their suspected Communist affiliation.

OK, everyone, now that the Oscar nominations are finally here, what are your thoughts?!

For 363 days a year, nobody gives a f*** about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“MSNBC’s Joy Reid tweeted, “#OscarsSoWhite black people can’t even get nominated for the movies about black people….”

“The Academy voters are still 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and their average age is 63”, Frasier pointed out.

“The Martian” was one of my favorite films of the year.

Looks like the movie industry’s “biggest fear” came true Thursday morning when Oscar nominations were announced and all 20 acting nods were given out to white actors and actreses. It will surely resurrect the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, despite the Academy’s attempt to promote diversity.

Yesha Callahan, staff writer at TheRoot.com, said she is not surprised by the lack of diversity. They said Hollywood remains racist as ever.

African-Americans in the film industry have long since learned that relying on white validation is a sand trap of sorts – but the Oscars matter. If it had been 1989’s most meritorious film (it so wasn’t) the appropriate response would have been to cancel the awards show altogether and replace it with a dark night of repentance and apology. “But that’s not your award – that’s the screenplay award …” Referring to the film’s protagonist, Alan Turing, a gay man believed to have committed suicide, Moore revealed that he tried to kill himself at 16 “because I felt weird and different and didn’t belong”. “What is important is that this entire conversation of diversity is here and that we are talking about it. And I think we will not just talk because people will say, ‘Well don’t just talk”. But their pride was short-lived. The power of his words to and their significance to this underrepresented group were immeasurable.

We saw it coming.

But there were options for actors of color this year: “Straight Outta Compton”, “Creed”, “Tangerine” and “Beast of No Nation”. For some reason, he doesn’t even receive a nomination in the Academy Awards’ Best Adapted Screenplay category.

Will you be tuning in to see who takes home a prize? “The proof is that despite a number of name, qualified black performers in major films, not one was nominated for an Academy Award”. And I’m sure you have a lot of opinions too.

So, the academy has a gender problem.