Why are the Oscar Nominations so Overwhelmingly White?

Other minority performers – like the Puerto Rico-born Benicio Del Toro, who was touted as a possible best supporting actor nominee for his performance as a Central Intelligence Agency operative with a private agenda in Sicario, and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, the transgender actresses were were nominated for Spirit Awards for Tangerine – were also overlooked.

I woke up this morning (no, I didn’t get myself a beer) and was excited to hear all about the Oscar nominations. The film was on the Academy’s radar; it has earned several accolades, including a nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Gregory Peck, who served as its president from 1967 through 1970, pored over the membership rolls and redesignated as “associate members” people who had not worked for many years, most of whom were retired and not especially in-tune with the cutting-edge of cinematic or social ideas.

Nominated for Best Picture are The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room and Spotlight. This year, there were more opportunities, including “Creed”, “Straight Outta Compton” and “Chi-raq”, as well as “Beasts of No Nation” (directed by Cary Fukunaga). They lured me in with the glitz, the glam, and the occasional nominee of color.

Last year’s Oscar nominations drew howls of protests for their lack of diversity. One year after the critically acclaimed “Selma” was largely snubbed by academy voters, sparking protests, actors and filmmakers of color are again being ignored – and Twitter is not happy.

Over the past few months, the one film that picked up a whole lot of Oscars steam – that hadn’t really been considered a contender at its time of release – was N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. Because this year, of all twenty actor nominations in the four main categories-best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress- there were not one was for a black actor, male or female. While I found Die Hard to be overrated, he was the ideal villain in it. And while I may love him from Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually and Galaxy Quest, the younger generation surely knows him from the Harry Potter films. They said Hollywood remains racist as ever.

She said: “What’s unique about the Oscars is that the voting is done by film-makers”. The first black actor to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel, who played a slave in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.