Thoughts from the Usher Podium: #OscarsSoWhite

The first black recipient of an Academy Award was Hattie McDaniel in 1940 for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). In a short and elegant speech, McDaniel thanked the Academy and said she "...sincerely hope[s] I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry." More than seventy years later she still is a credit to her race yet the fact that another woman didn't win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress until 1990 is not a credit to the Academy and the motion picture industry.

It's also important to note that in the Best Actress category, no black woman won until 2001. Black men have fared better in the acting category; Sidney Poitier won his Oscar in 1963 for Lilies of the Field (1963), though that honor wasn't repeated until 2001 when Denzel Washington won for Training Day (2001). The number of black men nominated for Best Director; three, and no none of them were Spike Lee.

Oh, come on!

There has been a lot of controversy based on this year's Academy Award's lack of diversity. Despite the fact that 2015 was a trending year for black entertainers and filmmakers, only one black person was nominated in a competitive category. As a result of this, entertainers like Jada-Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee have boycotted the ceremony on February 28 and have railed against the Academy's lack of diversity. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs has promised to change the criteria for Academy membership and voting. Members will now have to be "active" in the film industry over ten years to be considered a member unless they themselves have won a golden statuette. This ends the tradition of lifetime membership for all. "The Academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up," Boone said in a statement to the press.

Cheryl Boone Isaacs

Yet it is precisely that statement that's part of the problem and getting rid of lifetime membership is not going to solve the issue by any stretch of the imagination. The very sentiment that the industry needs to "catch up" is the real problem. Look beyond the familiar faces, the people in front of the camera and you will notice there's a draught of people working the less-glamorous jobs. editors, cinematographers, sound mixers, makeup artists, special effects crew, art directors all working behind the scenes to make your entertainment. Those are just the people who get major category awards; let's not forget gaffers, mic operators, stunt men, assistant directors, set dressers et al. There is a lack of diversity among the crew just as there is a lack of diversity among actors, directors and producers. The old adage it's not what you know, it's who you know applies here, so how is the Academy expected to lead when the already incredibly insulated film industry has a problem hiring diversity on a street level.

People like to think that awards are based on merit and shouldn't be based on race, nationality or any other criteria. I agree and if that were solely the case, Will Smith's sour grapes about his Concussion (2015) role would make any reasonable person's eyes roll. Yet as anyone who has ever been passed up for promotion knows, awards and rewards aren't based entirely on merit at all; they're based on economics and politics. Award season, like Black Friday or Happy Hour is all about getting people to spend money on something they could otherwise live without. The 2-3 months before award season is the ideal time for production companies to release their artistic movies; your Revenant's (2015), your Danish Girl's (2015) etc. that way people can be coaxed to seeing them by noticing they got award nominations under their sleeve. That's why despite Room (2015) being released in select theaters in October, it managed to be widely released December through January. This is all to guarantee that films of this nature get their budget back and hopefully make a nifty profit.

The problem with this economic model is it depends on the money of people who actually care about award season. That demographic usually skews older, doesn't care about diversity as much and often doesn't react well to films that are experimental in nature. Thus most movies come award season fall into one or more of these categories: period piece; a movie set in a nostalgic past such as the 60's or 50's, biographical drama; based on a person people feel smart for knowing who they are, and finally based on a novel with a fan base. This is why if a movie with a diverse cast does get nominated, racism is often the most important theme of the movie. Movies that lack racism as an important theme, or worse still, are actually popular (like Straight Outta Compton), are completely out of the loop.

So like really only one of these is not based on race or race relations

Politically, look at this year's nominees or nominees from years prior and you will start to see the same production companies; at least when it comes to distribution. Those companies have the finances and weight behind them to amass an award season campaign to convince Academy members to vote for them; smaller companies do not. Furthermore prolific producers and cross-discipline actors and actresses tend to get more nominations, or at the very least undeserved nominations because they cross-pollinate. The more you work, the more people you work with, the larger the trust, the more likely they'll vote for your movie despite maybe never seeing it. That's why objectively lesser movies like Unbroken (2014) can sneak in with a nomination or two while movies like 25th Hour (2002) barely get noticed. Many black filmmakers and (certainly many female filmmakers) tend to get pigeon-holed into working on genre movies that producers feel mirror their "strengths". Therefore they work with the same people and don't (or can't) branch out.

So what does this have to do with race? Politics and economics is ingrained into every racially tinged event in recent memory from Ferguson to Flint. Oppressive systems whether they're that way by design or not still disenfranchise and worse still are a reflection of a society that still struggles to realize the principles of equality of opportunity. Award season is just a tiny, little piece of that puzzle. I don't know if the Academy plans to increase diversity are going to do anything about the dysfunction of the film industry as a whole. Yet if the transition from Mammy in 1939 to Patsey in 2013 is any indication, we still have a long way to go.

Patsey from 12 Years a Slave (2013)