OscarsSoWhite, but change is coming

In response to the backlash over this being the second year in a row with not a single person of color being nominated for an acting award, the Academy has taken action. When Cheryl Boone Isaacs was appointed to the possition of president, she made a commitment to open up membership and reach out to minorities as well as younger filmmakers. The idea was to have the voting members better reflect the industry as well as the viewing public. Despite her living up to her promise and increasing minority’s membership by more that any single year, the nominations were as white as ever.

The Academy has instituted a variety of  new rules include a commitment to doubling the number of women and minorities in the academy by 2020 as well as, for the first time, limiting lifetime voting rights.

“It’s the right thing to do,” academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in an interview Friday. “We’ve been a more than predominantly white institution for a long time. We thought, we’ve got to change this and reflect the community much better.”

In other years, perhaps there was a single “Black film” for people to rally around, this year there were top-notch performances in a number of films, that could have resulted in dividing the vote. That said, Hollywood should be able to easily support any number of quality films, and clearly there were several performances that deserved recognition, a number of which made my list.

Lane J. lubell