By Dalton DeStefano ’16, Arts and Entertainment Editor

This feels all too familiar. I distinctly remember sitting at my computer this time last year, writing an article about the disappointing lack of diversity within the 2015 Oscar nominations. It pains me to say I was not too surprised when the 2016 Oscar nominations yielded the same, whitewashed results. Hollywood, though typically viewed as a hotbed of liberal progressiveness, has long been a nepotistic, homogenized world where white males are the overwhelming majority. Even setting aside the dismal track record of 0/40 acting nominees of color over the past two years, the Academy’s long-term statistics are even worse. In 88 years of awarding Oscars for acting, only 15 winners have been black, 6 winners have been of Latin American descent, and only 17 nominees have been Asian (only one single Asian woman has ever been nominated for Best Actress). These statistics are ridiculous, and the trend of ignoring actors of color continued on January 14^th where, despite landing precursors that generally lead to Oscar success (SAG awards, Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards etc.), actors like Idris Elba and Benicio del Toro missed out on Oscar nominations. (There were zero women of color even in contention for the awards this year, which is a completely separate—yet, in many ways, a more alarming—problem.) This has prompted many POC within the industry to speak out against the Academy Awards and/or Hollywood’s studio system. Among these are: Jada Pinkett-Smith, Will Smith, David Oyelowo, Viola Davis, and Spike Lee (who is receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy this year). This prompted the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs (coincidentally a woman of color herself), to release a statement decrying the lack of diverse recognition demonstrated by the nominations this year; this was shortly followed by an announcement of changes involving Academy memberships (such as giving only members who have worked in the industry within the past decade the ability to vote for the Oscars) to help rectify these problems.

Many have shifted blame towards Hollywood as a whole, citing the lack of three-dimensional roles available for actors of color in films to explain their lack of representation in the Oscar nominations (“They can’t nominate roles that  aren’t there!”), but I think this mindset lets the Academy off the hook where they should be held responsible. Of course Hollywood has a huge problem with producing movies about people of color (and there should be dozens of actors of color in contention each year come Oscar season), but 2015 was a great year for diverse roles—the Academy just chose to ignore them. In the indie hit Tangerine, trans women of color Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor gave two of the year’s most critically acclaimed performances. Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson gave crowd-pleasing nuanced performances in the box-office hit Creed. All of these actors should have been in contention, but they are shuffled off to the side because those roles “aren’t what the Academy goes for”. Apparently, what the Academy “goes for” are performances by white actors in movies about white men directed by white men. There is a noticeable in-group bias here; the white males that represent the majority of the Academy are likely to favor individuals of their own race/gender. These conversations about inclusion and representation are also present at Newark Academy, with groups such as Umojaa and GSA (the Gay-Straight Alliance) using Morning Meeting to present about issues of diversity within our own school community.

On February 28th, the Oscars were broadcast to millions of Americans across the country, and the show’s lack of diversity was the joke of the night. Host Chris Rock skewered the Academy with various monologues and jokes, but the only thing that will truly push Hollywood to change is financial gain. It is because of this that breakout movies like Straight Outta Compton are so important—they demonstrate that diverse audiences have a pull at the box office. Hopefully, studio executives will get this message and run with it, producing films made by (and starring) people who see the world from a fresh perspective. While it is difficult to say how quickly these problems will change, issues of diversity in Hollywood are evolving rapidly and deserve our attention.