12 Wild Oscar Conspiracy Theories People Actually Believe
3. The Oscars Are Racist
With the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite controversy still fresh in our
collective memory, its isn’t exactly a secret that many think the Academy
Awards might be just a little bit racist. Let’s take a look at the evidence.
The very same year #OscarsSoWhite spread across social media Selma, a film by a black female director about a pivotal juncture in black history, was snubbed for Best Picture and just last year the internet was again in an uproar when the Cary Joji Fukunaga directed and Idris Elba fronted Beasts of No Nation was snubbed at the Oscars entirely despite receiving widespread acclaim.
Those two incidents are just recent examples; it actually goes back much further. Following Hattie McDaniel’s history-making Oscar win in 1940, it would be another twenty-four years until another black performer took home an Oscar when Sidney Poitier won Best Actor and a further twenty-seven years after that until another black actress – Whoopi Goldberg – took home an award.
In fact, in the Academy Awards’ near eighty-nine year history Oscars have only been awarded to thirty-two times to black recipients. That number is round about the same for Asian and Hispanic Oscar winners and virtually non-existent for Native American recipients.
The Academy is quick to reward films that are racist too. In 1929 Warner Brothers was awarded the first ever Honorary Academy Award for producing The Jazz Singer – a film in which star Al Jolson infamously appeared in blackface – and in 1936 bestowed the same award to director D.W. Griffith, the man responsible for uber-racist 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.
At this year’s Oscars there’s a number of non-white nominees including Barry Jenkins’ Best Director nomination for Moonlight and Dev Patel’s Best Supporting Actor nomination for Lion, so only time will tell if the Academy will redeem their racist selves somewhat yet. Though considering that at the last count the Academy voting body was predominantly white dudes, maybe that’s still a pipe dream.