By now you’ve probably heard the news; the Oscars are So White. With the announcement of the 2016 Oscar nominees came perhaps the most controversial hashtag in Twitter history (after #BlackLivesMatter)  – #OscarsSoWhite. As expected, the hashtag sparked lively conversation and debate across social media and is still going on to this day – even though the hashtag was created a year ago by April Reign (@ReignofApril) after the announcement of the 2015 Oscar nominees. This year, after The Academy chose to nominate all white actors/actresses in all available acting categories, especially after a year filled with worthy performances from non-white actors/actresses, it is no surprise that it did. To an outsider looking at those nominations, you would think that only white actors exist in Hollywood. All one has to do is look at the choices and then you start to wonder, were these choices actually deliberate? Do I live in a world where Benicio Del Toro’s performance in Sicario didn’t get a nomination but Bryan Cranston’s performance in Trumbo did? And this isn’t to knock Bryan Cranston’s acting chops or anything. I think he is a fine actor as he proved time and time again in Breaking Bad. But do I think his performance in Trumbo is better than Del Toro’s chilling performance in Sicario? No. No, I don’t. Just like I do not think Mark Ruffalo’s performance in Spotlight is better than Idris Elba’s performance in Beasts of No Nation. But these are just my opinions and I’m not a member of The Academy unfortunately. Neither is April Reign.

In response to the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag & subsequent movement, many prominent black actors and filmmakers such as Will Smith, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Spike Lee called for a boycott of the Oscars, indirectly implying that The Academy was racist or at least prejudiced to an extent. Other black actors felt that boycotting the Oscars would be career suicide and they refused to comment. Others, specifically Whoopi Goldberg, refuted the implication that The Academy was racist or prejudiced by noting her two nominations and one win as an example of how un-racist they were. After these filmmakers voiced their opinions on the matter, it was suddenly THE question of the season. Why were the Oscars so white for the second year in a row even though there were many worthy performances from POC? Diversity; How do we solve Hollywood’s lack of it? Suddenly, every celebrity on every red carpet and on every press tour was being asked what they thought of diversity in Hollywood and what came next is what I like to call “deviating from the issue at hand.”

The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag has gone through a metamorphosis of sorts. It started out as a semi-serious tag mostly filled with jokes. April Reign began the hashtag with a joke of her own – “#OscarsSoWhite it asked to touch my hair” touching on the kind of racially charged micro-aggression black women face on almost a daily basis. Then the jokes turned into political statements and hard-to-swallow truths. The conversation soon quickly changed from how white the Oscars were to how white Hollywood was in general. The topic of diversity begs the questions; How are non-white actors/actresses supposed to earn acting nominations if the chances aren’t given to them? How are they supposed to prove themselves if the kind of roles given to them are rarely the kind of roles The Academy considers?

If you ask these questions publicly, you will get bombarded with all kinds of examples of how many non-white actors and actresses have been nominated over the years. But that is not the issue here. Nobody is claiming that non-white actors and actresses have never been nominated for or even won an Oscar. The issue here is that they don’t have nearly the same chances to get nominated as their white counterparts do. Sometimes, even when non-white actors are the star of the movie and even have the movie named after their character, the white actor still gets the nomination (see: Creed). In my opinion, though the diversity conversation grew from the #OscarsSoWhite movement, though race is a major component in this discussion, diversity is about more than just race. It is about more than white vs. black even though racially charged discussions on Twitter have made it so. I ask; why are there so few visible non-white actors and actresses? Why are there so few visible non-white directors? I also ask; Why are there so few female directors? Why are there so few trans actors/actresses? Where are the female writers/directors/cinematographers? Where are the disabled? Where are the gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, or polysexual actors/actresses? Why is it that the minute you come out as anything other than straight, your acting career is suddenly in jeopardy? As though you will suddenly lose the ability to act because of who you share your bed with. The visibility for these aforementioned groups of people is almost nonexistent even though they very well exist.

Opportunities in Hollywood should be left open to everyone. I have always maintained that the reason why we’re seeing so many reboots and adaptations of things such as Hasbro toys or cell phone gaming apps (see: the Angry Birds movie) is because the straight, white men who run the industry are obviously running out of ideas but they’re too scared to let anyone else have a shot. Diversity is not just the newest trend of 2016. This is NOT the Ice Bucket Challenge 2.0. It is not a topic of discussion you ask actors hoping to get some outrageous sound bite quoted entirely out of context so you can splatter it all over your magazines and online blogs for hits and tons of traffic. More and more it seems like diversity is used merely as a baiting tactic to get clueless actors to put their foot in their mouths so we can all barrage them with insults online. I agree that actors who claim that the diversity talk is “racist to white people” or that non-white actors should wait their turn deserve our ire because those kinds of statements are ignorant. But rather than simply highlighting the ignorance in old white actors and filmmakers, the topic of diversity should be less talk, more action. Instead of simply talking about Hollywood’s lack of diversity, let us do something about it!

 

I believe that there are many talented non-white, non-straight and non-male actresses, directors, producers, cinematographers, and screenwriters out there and they are not benefiting from simply talking about how much Hollywood’s lack of diversity sucks. Before the Oscars stop being so white and so male, change has to come from within the industry. It is not a question of whether or not there is promising talent just waiting to be discovered, the industry has to be willing to discover them. Those in power in the industry have to be willing to listen to different stories that are just begging to be told. Television shows are already leading the charge in including more diversity in their casts. Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, Quantico, Black-ish, Fresh Off The Boat, Orange Is The New Black — these are just a few examples of different shows on tv exhibiting wildly diverse cast members. There was a time when TV actors were looked down on and moving from films to TV was viewed as a career demotion, but now we are witnessing an exodus of film actors crossing over to television willingly simply because TV is more diverse and more liberal in the kind of stories that can be told. In an era where the television industry is becoming more and more proactive, perhaps the film industry should follow the leader.