Oscar Blackout

Blacks - blacks, not African-Americans (I'm not going to sacrifice brevity in favor of a seven-syllable, sixteen-letter hyphenated word on the altar of political correctness) - are angry, and rightfully so, that not a single black actor has been nominated for an Academy Award for best acting in a major or supporting role this year. And, I would also add, there are no Asians honored with a nomination, and unless you count Spaniard Javier Bardem (since he's a white European, no one likely would), no Hispanics either. The reasons for the absence of blacks among the nominations vary, but many agree it can be boiled down to three reasons: No one feels a need to nominate a black actor for an Oscar for the sake of diversity, now that Barack Obama is President; most of the movies black actors were in that were released in 2010 weren't very good, and; the few that were Oscar-worthy, like Tyler Perry's film version of For Colored Girls, were underpublicized.

Fine, but not even one nomination? And no nominations for Latinos and Asians, either? It can be argued that Hollywood and people of color have had an uneasy relationship with each other, with the motion picture industry trying to accommodate diversity and so-called "minorities" expressing themselves in an alternative culture but still wanting a place in the mainstream. And it can't be denied that, people of color have earned a place in the mainstream. Certainly blacks. White people have embraced black culture in so many ways that everything from Louis Armstrong to Motown, from Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin to the artist once again known as Prince, from Chuck Berry to Halle Berry, isn't just "African-American" culture - it's American culture. And this is how we reward them? Okay, black actors didn't make great movies this past year, but maybe white directors like, say, Nancy Meyers might want to consider Angela Bassett for a role that would normally go to Diane Keaton? Does every role have to be specifically written for a white actor or a black actor? Unless you're doing a movie about an integrated neighborhood or interracial romance, I don't think so. And Hollywood has always been rather timid at any storyline that deliberately involves people of different races.

I do find it fascinating, though, that blacks are upset about black actors not getting nominations for awards from an academy that the Golden Globes and the awards from the Screen Actors Guild are making increasingly irrelevant; people only watch the Oscars to see the gowns the starlets are wearing. Oscars always seem to go to commercially successful "serious" films from the studios or to smaller films with respectable box office numbers. And when Hollywood does try to acknowledge race or ethnicity, the results can be humorous. I'm sure Gandhi deserved the 1983 Best Picture Oscar. And Ben Kingsley, who won the Best Actor Oscar that year for the title role, can win an award by reading the London phone book. But some observers wryly noted that Gandhi was celebrated so spectacularly because Gandhi himself represented everything people in Hollywood want to be - "moral, tan and thin."

How about 1985's The Color Purple? No one was going to argue that a serious movie bringing Alice Walker's black feminist novel to life didn't deserve recognition from the Academy. And it did get recognition in the form of eleven nominations. There was just one problem: Steven Spielberg directed it. Spielberg didn't get a nomination for best director, largely because he remained disrespected for his family action movies and, besides, despite some critical acclaim for his film, many folks in turn found his adaptation of Walker's book disrespectful. Having acknowledged the earnestness of Spielberg's efforts to promote black-oriented cinema without actually having to nominate Spielberg himself, the Academy then let Spielberg know that they liked the book better by giving the movie no Oscars. (Until his Schindler's List won the Best Picture Oscar nearly a decade later, the only color Spielberg saw was red.)

Black cinematic achievements have come in fits and starts, just like any other struggle for equality in America, so this story isn't going to go away even after the Oscar ceremony tomorrow. In the meantime, though, we should consider some even more troubling trends, like the fact that there are no black U.S. Senators and only one black state governor. And maybe we as a nation should concentrate on how to produce more black scientists and doctors, as well as more black professors of something other than ethnic studies.

Now, if you'll please excuse me, I'm going to check on who won the Razzies. As for the Oscars tomorrow, white America's terminal Anglophilia (that would include me, I'm afraid) should ensure that The King's Speech will clean up handily.