By NICK NATALE
For the past 92 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science has been honoring Hollywood’s greatest achievements in film at the Oscars, and for most of the 92 years black representation has been ignored.
While over the years African Americans have been acknowledged for some of their work, they have been few and far between. At this year’s Academy Awards, the lack of representation was apparent.
Kamal Jennings, 21, an African American filmmaking major at Rutgers University said,” The Academy has had a long history of snubbing black filmmakers and actors, and this year it shows that they’re unwilling to change. I know for a few years there were record highs of black Oscar winners, but for the 92 years this has been going on, about 88 of them lacked black representation.”
Historically, the Oscars have not been kind towards African American filmmakers. The Academy has been celebrating excellence in film since 1927, and up until this year less than 200 African Americans have been nominated for awards.
In the past few years, people on social media have brought this issue to light by creating the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in 2015 to acknowledge the lack of racial diversity amongst Oscar nominees. In response, the Academy nominated a record number of African Americans in 2016 with 18 total, and followed that up three years later with 15 nominations, the second most ever.
During the 91st Academy Awards in 2019, the 15 black nominees took home a record seven Oscars. During the span of #OscarsSoWhite popularity, two films that focused on African American characters, “Moonlight” (2017) and “Green Book” (2019), took home the Best Picture award. Filmmaker Spike Lee was the first black Best Director winner, black actors Mahershala Ali, Viola Davis and Regina King all won Best Supporting Actor. Other films such as Black Panther, BlackkKlansman and Kobe Bryant’s, “Dear Basketball,”took home Oscars. However, recent success of African American filmmakers doesn’t cover up years of little to no representation.
PHOTO/NY Post
When the Oscars held their first award ceremony in 1927, there was not a single African American person nominated for an award. In fact, it wasn’t until 12 years later that a black person was nominated when Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Gone with the Wind.”
It wasn’t until 24 years later in 1963 that another black actor won an award, this time being Sidney Poitier for his role in” Lilies of the Field.”
Only 23 black nominees have even won non-acting awards in the show’s 92 years. The past few years, however, showed that the Academy had become more diverse and willing to nominate and award more African Americans, until this past year when controversy broke out again.
Academy Fails to Fully Recognize Black Artists Again
Despite a three year stretch where it finally seemed the Academy had learned to appreciate black filmmaking, they failed to keep the streak going in 2020. After years of record breaking nominations and wins for African American actors, actresses and filmmakers, only five awards featured black people. The two notable nominees were actress Cynthia Erivo for her portrayal of” Harriet Tubman” and black couple Matthew A. Cherry and Karen Rupert Toliver, were the only African Americans awarded with an Oscar that night.
The Best Actress nominee Erivo spoke to Variety about what it was like to be one of the few African American nominees.
“It feels a bit like I’ve got a responsibility to represent all the people of color who have done incredible work this year because I do believe we’ve had some brilliant films made, shows come out this year and brilliant direction and writers,” said Erivo. “I want hopefully for this to serve as an example as to why we need to start celebrating people of color as well — really paying attention to how we vote for them and how we vote for the people who are nominated. We need to see some changes.”
#Oscars Moment: Hair Love wins Best Animated Short Film! pic.twitter.com/LjInB0ejmy
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 10, 2020
Industry observes hope that the Oscars can return to the way they were just a few years ago when they acknowledged the brilliant work by people of the black community in films, and make this year’s lack of representation just an outlier.
This story is well written. You can definitely sense that there is original reporting in this piece as there is a comment from a Rutgers film student, which is enjoyable. Maybe adding more insight from other students, even film students on Ramapo’s campus would have been interesting. There are links to reliable sources such as NPR and Variety, proving your research. You made great points throughout your article, from comparing it to last year’s wins to including a quote from “Harriet” actress Cynthia Erivo. Overall, well done.
I would like to see more information from recent years that is showing the rise of blacks in awards. I know this year was very nonexistent for them but you showed last year and how good they did. I still believe that the black community is going to be on the rise in receiving awards at the Oscars. I liked the picture from the past of Kobe Bryant and it was when he became the first African American to win best animated short. I like the closing of the story with how the last sentence was written and the quote from the best actress Erivo on what it was like to be a nominee.