The Year in Entertainment 2016 — #OscarsSoWhite: How Diversity and Inclusion Became Major Talking Points

ABC/Randy Holmes(NEW YORK) — When nominations for the 88th Academy Awards were announced, revealing that only white performers were nominated in the top acting categories for the second year in a row, social media reflected the lack of diversity by bringing back the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. As of February 2016, only 15 black actors and actresses had won Academy Awards in the ceremony’s history.

In response, the Academy expressed plans to diversify their organization as well as its members. Their first steps included hiring Reginald Hudlin and Chris Rock as co-producer and host, respectively, for the Oscars on February 28th.

Throughout 2016 the #OscarsSoWhite backlash led to intense conversations and ongoing narratives about diversity and inclusion.

— In January, filmmaker Spike Lee announced via a lengthy statement posted to Instagram he wouldn’t be attending the Oscars, due to the lack of racial diversity among the acting nominees. He captioned his post, #OscarSoWhite…Again.”  The same day, Jada Pinkett Smith announced she’d be skipping the ceremony as well. The actress took to Facebook express her thoughts, offering the title, “We must stand in our power!”  Hours later, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who’s black, released a statement saying she was “both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion.”

— In an exclusive interview with GMA‘s Robin Roberts, Will Smith, who was passed over for an Oscar nomination for his performance in the football drama Concussion, commented on his wife’s Oscars boycott and the award nominations. “When I look at it, the nominations reflect the Academy. The Academy reflects the industry, reflects Hollywood, and then the industry reflects America,” Smith told Roberts. “It reflects a series of challenges that we are having in our country at the moment.

— The View moderator, Whoppi Goldberg, who was announced as one of the Oscar presenters, said of the Oscar boycott discussion, “Why is this a conversation that we only have once a year because every year we get all fired up and then the rest of the year, nobody says anything?”

— Selma director Ava DuVernay offered her thoughts on diversity during a Sundance Film Festival luncheon in January, saying she hated the term. “I feel it’s a medicinal word that has no emotional resonance, and this is a really emotional issue,” she said. “It’s emotional for artists who are women and people of color to have less value placed on our worldview.”

— President Obama weighed in on the controversy during a series of wide-ranging interviews in January, saying diversity “makes for better entertainment, it makes everybody feel part of one American family, so I think as a whole the industry should do what every other industry should do, which is to look for talent, provide opportunity to everybody. And I think the Oscar debate is really just an expression of this broader issue. Are we making sure that everybody is getting a fair shot?”

— In February, Oscar winner Halle Berry weighed in: “As filmmakers and as actors, we have a responsibility to tell the truth. And the films, I think, that are coming out of Hollywood aren’t truthful. And the reason they’re not truthful, these days, is that they’re not really depicting the importance and the involvement and the participation of people of color in our American culture,” Berry said.

— Also in February, a new study completed by the Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversityfound women and racial minorities were severely under-represented in every aspect of TV and movie entertainment.  Just one-third of speaking characters were female, while fewer than that — just over 28% — were from minority groups.  According to the report, that’s 10% less than the makeup of the U.S. population in general.  Overall, the numbers “[don’t] match the norms of the population of the United States,” the report declared.

— February 25, Chris Rock hosted the Oscars, addressing the controversy in his monologue and offering his thoughts on racism in Hollywood throughout the night.

— In June, the Motion Picture Academy extended 683 new membership invitations to musicians, actors, filmmakers and executives alike. Of that group, 41 percent are people of color and 46 percent are female. Nate Parker, Michael B. Jordan, Idris Elba, America Ferrera and Regina King were among some of the new invitees.

— In August, Cheryl Boone Isaacs was re-elected as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by the board of governors.Isaacs, the first African-American to hold the office and the third woman to do so, began her fourth term as president and her 24th as a governor, representing the public relations branch of the Academy.

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