#OscarsSoWhite that if Common and John Legend win an Academy Award for Best Original Song this Sunday, it will be only the 32nd time in 87 years that a black person has held a competitive Oscar on Hollywood’s biggest stage. That’s 32 times out of more than 2,900 winners.
“It’s a white industry. Just as the NBA is a black industry. I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing. It just is,” Chris Rock wrote last year in a thoughtful op-ed for The Hollywood Reporter. Rock’s piece went viral because of how clearly he laid out the problems in Hollywood: It’s a place where at every level, from the top on down, diversity is lagging behind society.
Except here’s where Rock was wrong: It is a “bad thing.” Last year, 43 million people watched the Academy Awards. This year’s ceremony will reach more than 200 countries around the globe. For 87 years, the Oscars have been a celebration of filmmaking. And the message it puts across, however unintentionally, is hard to miss: Certain voices matter more than others.
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