#oscarssowhite
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#OscarsSoBlack: Finally, Some Melanin-Proficient People Receive Nominations
After two straight years of #OscarsSoWhite, in which black actors were shut out of all the acting categories, this year’s Academy Awards nominations featured so much blackness, some racist trolls on Twitter might just start calling the Oscars the BET Awards. Moonlight, director Barry Jenkins’ stunning coming-of-age tale, received a total of eight nominations (the…
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Beyond the Hashtag: Black Films Have Shown Much Promise Since #OscarsSoWhite
As remote as 2015 now feels, it’s hard to forget, as the award season rolls around again, the groundswell caused by the hashtag that became the David to Hollywood’s Goliath. After the Academy Award nominations in February 2016 essentially shut out people of color in several categories two years in a row, social media erupted…
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7 Black Movies to See if You Can’t Bear to See Birth of a Nation (or Even if You Do)
Ever since Nate Parker’s film The Birth of a Nation earned a record $17.5 million distribution deal and walked away with the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival back in January, the movie has been positioned as the film most likely to solve Hollywood’s #OscarsSoWhite problem. But Parker’s past…
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The Tragic Tale of TV’s 1st Black Stars Is Being Retold for the #OscarsSoWhite Era
Imagine a show so popular that when it’s on, even movie theaters stop films midreel and broadcast it so that audiences won’t stay home. For decades in the first half of the 20th century, that is exactly what The Amos ’n Andy Show was. During the heyday of radio, it was America’s most-listened-to program. Set in Harlem,…
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#OscarsNotSoWhite? Here’s a List of the Black Invitees to the Academy
Cheryl Boone Isaacs is one film industry leader who is taking the #OscarsSoWhite criticism to heart and instituting change. Back in January, Isaacs, president of the Oscar-granting Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, publicly announced the academy’s plan to double the number of women and members from diverse backgrounds by 2020. And on Wednesday, the…
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Kerry Washington: Not Only Are #OscarsSoWhite, but So Is Every Industry
Actors Kerry Washington and Aziz Ansari had a candid (well, as candid as one can be in front of an audience) conversation Friday for the fourth season of Variety and PBS’ 0Actors on Actors series Friday. The two actors of color discussed diversity in television and the possible reasons that the medium is more diverse…
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Chris Rock Was Really Bad Last Night, And The #OscarsSoWhite Skits Were Even Worse
I’ve started and stopped writing this three times already; scribbling a few sentences out and deleting them as soon as I was finished typing them. Because, as the title suggests, I am going to talk about how bad Chris Rock was at the Oscars last night, and how bad the #OscarsSoWhite skits were — skits…
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Why Awards Like The Oscars Matter To Black Artists, Explained
Who is Janet Hubert? Janet Hubert is a veteran actress best known for her role as Vivian Banks on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” In season four of the show, Hubert was replaced by Daphne Maxwell Reid; an act that upset so many Black people that an professed affinity for the “First Aunt Viv” has become…
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#OscarsSoWhite That Even Their Feminism Is Translucent
So, the Oscars were a thing that happened yesterday. I’ll be honest, I turned it off about 30 minutes after the red carpet fashion show – Neil Patrick Harris joked about how white the audience was and everyone laughed at acknowledging their privilege in a way that was too “yes I’m an asshole but at…