As the Oscars roll around every year, most movie fans are interested to see if this year's favorites will get a nomination or maybe even secure an award. However, this year, the nominations were blatantly picked by a group of old, white people. How do we know this? Well, only white actors were nominated, for the second year in a row.

This is outrageous, considering we live in an age when equality is supposedly held to high standards. And no, people are not complaining about only white people winning the awards, it is worse than that. No people of color were even nominated.

It's not like there was a lack of options for well deserving actors of color either. A few major options include all of the young actors from "Straight Outta Compton," Will Smith in "Concussion", Michael B. Jordan in "Creed" to name a few. Strangely enough, from the movie "Creed", Sylvester Stallone was nominated for best actor in a supporting role. Interesting, considering this movie was centered on Apollo Creed's son and not exactly Rocky (for once in the franchise's history), but I digress.

While racial diversity in Hollywood is one of the largest issues, gender diversity is also something to keep in mind. While more white women were nominated than any people of color, it is still a small number compared to the number of male nominations. Hollywood has long been a white males club, and is very slowly changing its ways. With the vast ability and readiness of more and more people to call out Hollywood on these behaviors, hopefully things will begin to change as they should.

As I read many articles on this topic, I came across this CNN article and a specific paragraph bothered me. One paragraph states "Just think: We are protesting that black people don't get enough Oscar nominations! Just 30 years ago, that would have sounded like science fiction."

While the article is mainly reprimanding Hollywood for its poor treatment of diversity, this idea seemed out of place. Things like this are trying to get people to be less angry, to be less ready to protest and speak up. The fact that this notion would have been unheard of 30 years ago is not a consolation prize. We have come a long way, but we need to continue moving forward. People need to continue pushing against the lack of diversity and ingrained ideals from our (embarrassing) past as nation.