The 2018 Oscars aired this past Sunday, March 4 on ABC, and I must say that based on what I saw, there were plenty of minority nominees but not a lot of winners. There were, however, a few highlights that I wanted to point out to say that the Oscars were not totally on white side.
Jordan Peele won for the best original screenplay for his work on "Get Out," and he was nominated for a few other categories through the night. Some of Peele’s other nominations included best picture and best director.
There were plenty, and I do mean plenty, of minority presenters and nominations, but the questions become, "why would there not be nearly as many winners as there were winners from the minority race?" and, "does the Academy still hold a little bit of bias for the Caucasian race?"
Throughout the years, there were a lot of notable minority winners at various Oscars. In 2002, Halie Berry won for the best lead actress for the movie "Monster’s Ball," she was the first and only African-American woman to win the award.
In 1964, in the midst of the civil rights movement, Sidney Poitier became the first African-American ever to win an Academy Award for best actor in the movie "Lilies Of The Field."
Since then, there have been plenty of black winners to win Academy Awards.
In fact, as of 2018, Denzel Washington has the most nominations for an African-American Actor, and Quvenzhané Wallis was the youngest African-American ever to be nominated for an Oscar for her performance in "Beast Of The Southern Wild" in 2012.
In 2007, Jennifer Hudson was the youngest African-American (male or female) to win an Academy Award. With all of the honors that were bestowed upon African-Americans in the past few years, it is no wonder that the Academy could have “stepped back” with its minority winners.
At the end of the show, there was an interesting note, the academy votes on who would win out of the nominees, and they are decided by an academy committee.
My question is will the Academy Awards ever feature more than one or two minority winners taking home Oscar? For that answer, we would have to look at the history of our country and the history of race in our country.
Ever since the reconstruction period ended and the Jim Crow period began, African-Americans have and most likely will always have it rough, just not as bad as during the Jim Crow period.
The segregation of America even hit Hollywood as most actors/actress of color had a hard time finding acting jobs of substance and acting jobs that did not continually feed into the stereotypical thoughts about African-Americans.
Unfortunately, African-Americans could only get roles that their Caucasian co-stars could look down upon, and that did not change until the late 1980s when The Color Purple sort of shined a light on how bad African-Americans were living, and it tugged at the heartstrings of White America.
From then on, more African-Americans were able to gain more prominent roles. This started a trend to make African-Americans look more successful than what society thinks.
I feel that the Oscars are more than just actors/actress of substance getting together, it is about actors/actress who were working hard to accomplish their dreams and get recognized for it.
There are plenty of minorities who are worthy of Oscars, but a lot of times, they are looked over. I personally feel that the Academy needs to turn the voting (some of them) to the voters.
If the public has a say in who is deserving of Oscars, then maybe those who will win would be fair and balanced out.
I can only hope that winners would be chosen a little more fairly in the future, not saying it is not fair now, I am just saying that I am hoping that more minorities are chosen for Oscars in the future.
