#HollywoodSoWhite

#OscarsSoWhite creator April Reign.

#OscarsSoWhite targets the wrong thing. #OscarsSoWhite is an important movement. Both of these things can be true. And both of them are. The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, created by April Reign, came into use after the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced in 2015, as a way to bemoan the lack of diversity among the acting nominees. For the 87th and 88th Academy Awards, all of the acting nominees were white. Since then, the 89th and 90th Academy Awards have seen eleven acting nominees of color, with seven nominees for last year’s ceremony and four nominees for this year’s ceremony. But there is still work to be done in increasing representation around Hollywood. And it doesn’t lie with the Academy Awards.

While the Academy Awards can surely do a better job when it comes to nominating entertainers of colors (an article in The Huffington Post noted that no Asian or Latino actors were nominated this year), they can only really work with what they’re given. If Hollywood studios don’t put people of color on the screen and behind the camera, then the Academy Award nomination are invariably skewed towards the group that has always dominated them: white men. #OscarsSoWhite brings much-needed attention to Hollywood’s continuing issues of representation, but these issues aren’t surface-level. They go far beyond a single awards ceremony. These issues start with the studios, who have the power to lend people of color and other minorities a larger platform. Without this platform and because of systematic racism in America, people of color are inherently at a disadvantage.

And so it starts with those that can make films in the first place. It starts with those that are positions of power. Studios are not the only ones that hold this responsibility, however. Directors themselves can also wield significant influence when it comes to the composition of their crew, as seen in last year’s Mudbound, with director Dee Rees working with openly lesbian cinematographer Rachel Morrison (who earned an Academy Award nomination for her work, making her the first woman to do so), Japanese-American editor Mako Kamitsuna and black composer Tamar-kali. But the fact that this is one film that comes to mind when I think of those with a diverse cast is a bit unfortunate.

In essence, I think that the movement should be #HollywoodSoWhite and not #OscarsSoWhite. While the Academy Awards do have the power to award minorities (as they did with Jordan Peele a few nights ago by making him the first Black person to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay), I think that the main obstacle they face is the industry itself. While the policies enacted a few years ago to make the composition of the Academy more diverse are welcome and necessary changes, the Academy Awards can only nominate what gets produced. And so while I think that Reign’s hashtag has already done a lot for issues of representation in Hollywood, I don’t think it has adequately addressed the central problem of it all: Hollywood itself.