Posted on 01/18/2016 3:30:07 PM PST by SeekAndFind
There will be two empty seats during the upcoming 88th Academy Awards. Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that they will not be attending the 2016 Oscars over the lack of diversity in this year's nominations.
As previously reported, Pinkett Smith, 44, initially posted a series of tweets on Saturday to air her grievances. On Monday, she shared a Facebook video and confirmed that she will not be attending or watching the live show. (Last year, only white actors received nominations too.)
"I can't help but ask the question: Is it time that people of color recognize how much power [and] influence we have amassed that we no longer need to ask to be invited anywhere?" the Gotham alum said in the clip, posted on Monday, January 18. "Have we now come to a new time and place where we recognize that we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledgment or respect of any group? The academy has the right to acknowledge whoever they choose. To invite whoever they choose. And now I think that it's our responsibility now to make the change.
"Maybe it is time to pull back our resources, and we put them back into our communities. Into our programs. And we make programs for ourselves that acknowledges us in ways that we see fit. That are just as good as what the so-called 'mainstream' wants," she continued. "Begging for acknowledgment or even asking diminishes dignity and diminishes power. And we are a dignified people, and we are powerful. So let the Academy do them in all grace and love. And let's do us differently."
If black people want to get nominated for the Oscars then they have to make better movies.
Amazing how that works.
But if they start getting Oscars just because they’re black then any black movie that gets an Oscar will be meaningless to me as just another example of Affirmative Action.
And make sure they gay it up.
Jada has quite a scowl on, doesn’t she?
You mean you want Obama to start working in Hollywood?
Don’t forget “Out of Africa” when you discuss Best Picture winners that were never watchable and certainly inspire NO one to watch them ever again. 30 years later I dubbed it “A River Doesn’t Run Through It.”
Yeah, Out of Africa was BORING.
Since the National Basketball Association started handing out MVP awards, some 50 years ago, Blacks, who are 13% of the nation’s population, have won the award over 80% of the time. Deservedly so. Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem, Magic, Jordan, Tim Duncan, Lebron, et al, have been truly deserving. Are the folks who choose Oscar winners more prejudiced than those who vote on basketball greatness? I doubt it.
Why aren’t White people complaining that in the NBA, 4 out of 5 players are Black? The NFL is close behind at 2 out of 3. That’s 5 or 6 times what quota counters will find of Blacks in the overall population. Whites don’t complain because there is nothing to complain about, just as there is nothing to condemn the National Hockey League because there are only a handful of Black players.
The only basis for complaint is if people are excluded because of their race, as was the case in pre-Jackie Robinson Major League Baseball days. If the best players are Black, God bless them! And if the best actors are white (this year), well, so what?
“affirmative action Oscars” invalidates the definition of the awards nominations as honoring highest cinematic achievement
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