‘We need to step this up’: film academy director

Amid an outcry against a field of Oscar-nominated performers lacking a single person of colour for a second straight year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a sweeping affirmative action programme last Friday, pledging to double female and minority membership by 2020.

African-American filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who many expected to score a Best Director nomination for Selma previous year, is also pleased with the Academy’s new position on diversity issues.

“The Academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up”, Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement.

The measures will ultimately remove voting privileges from older Academy members and aggressively recruit new voting members “who represent greater diversity”.

The Academy announced that beginning later this year – not affecting votes for the 2016 Oscars – each new member’s voting status will last 10 years, and be renewed if they have been active in movies during that time.

In a conversation on “The View” on Monday, Whoopi Goldberg shared her thoughts on the current conversation surrounding the lack of non-white Oscar nominees. Marginalized artists have advocated for Academy change for DECADES.

The new rules, which will be applied retroactively to current members, may alter what critics have described as the insidery nature of gaining membership. Some may argue the Academy’s delayed response doesn’t exactly constitute “leadership”, but at least they’re offering some sort of substantive response as opposed to maintaining the silence that’s characterized years past.

The roster of the 6,000 or so academy members has never been publicly disclosed, though a 2012 Los Angeles Times study found its members were almost 94 percent white and 77 percent male.

“I applaud their attempts to do something about it”, said Don Cheadle, who was nominated for best actor in 2005 for his performance in “Hotel Rwanda”.

The Academy’s Board has approved substantive changes created to make its membership, governing bodies, and voting members significantly more diverse. Additionally, multiple black celebrities including Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith and Spike Lee have stated that they are boycotting the Oscars ceremony in February.

“Just received from The Academy”. To help Hollywood along in its struggle for inclusion, the National Urban League, the National Action Network and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation announced they’ve requested a meeting with the academy and film industry leaders.

The decisions said to be made effective following next year is to ensure that more members from different races will be included in the Academy.

Nelson Mandela’s daughter Maki, meanwhile, has called the protests about the lack of black actors in this year’s nominees “very significant”.