Climate change is a great analogy. For 70 years there were almost no Black nominees. The last 15 a fair number. Complaining about the last 2 years seems akin to the climate change denier asking “why was it so cold last year?”
I’d agree that past 15 years ago there was bias.
probably because there are not very many directors, writers, cinematographers, etc, who are black. That would be racism on the part of studios, not the Academy.
Again, leading roles not going towards black people is the fault of studios, not, the Academy.
Of your criticism of my position I’d say this is the strongest.
There is a very big shortage in this category. Huge.
How about this perspective – this is assuming your stats cover the years of 2001 - 2016
Best Actor – in 10 out of 16 years, no black actors were even nominated, and your stats don’t show us the total number of nominees
Best Actress – in 12 of 16 years, no black actresses were even nominated, and your stats don’t show us the total number of nominees
Best Supporting Actor-- in 12 of 16 years, no black actors were even nominated, and your stats don’t show us the total number of nominees
Best Supporting Actress-- in 8 of 16 years, no black actresses were even nominated, and your stats don’t show us the total number of nominees.
Prove that I’m not convinced? You’ll have to take my word for it, I’m afraid.
I didn’t say that any were? I said zero nominations is a problem. It could be a problem with the Academy. It could be a problem with the studios. It could be a problem with the culture in Hollywood. It could be a problem in acting schools where they just don’t seem to attract black talent. It could be that the American people just don’t want to pay to see black actors. It could be that black parents don’t encourage or value acting as a hobby or career. It could be a statistical blip that will go away next year.
In all cases except the latter it’s a problem. And we should find out what the problem is and then fix it. If it turns out to be a statistical blip, maybe we don’t have to do anything to fix the problem, but I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that it is the case yet. There’s more work to do.
You have a very good point. That does seem kind of biased/racist.
How can you draw this conclusion without a denominator? Even assuming all actors perform equally, without knowing the population of all actors for all movies that qualify and using that as your denominator, your analysis is worthless.
Nm
He gave the denominator for nominations in the quote box. 300. So 29/300.
Most movies have more than one star. (The whole categories of Supporting Actor/Actress are for people who are NOT the main star, while the 20 acting nominations this year, e.g., represent 14 different movies, not 20.) That fact doesn’t seem to be factored into your statistics.
I think all of that is true, and, well stated. I’m not always able to put my point across so succinctly or clearly but I think you did a good job of that. I agree with all of your criticisms.
I agree, whatever needs fixing should be addressed.
However
No one has mentioned any actual actor/actress/director/writer that was snubbed during the past 2 years. Well, except Michael B Jordan.
I notice also, in each year there was a nomination, there was only 1 nomination for an African American.
That seems very suspect.
I think its all payback for Will Smith subjecting us to his son’s horrible acting. It will take generations to forgive and forget that.
This puts it a lot better than I did. I’m switching my answer to this one!
That’s the denominator for total nominations - not for total population of actors in qualifying roles that did not get nominated.
If the population of eligible actors is 45% non-white and the number of non-white people nominated is 10% then that could be something to explore. If the population of eligible actors is 1% non-white and the number of non-white people nominated is 10%, that’s less newsworthy. This assumes that all actors have the same acting ability as well.
Why do you agree to that? Again, you stat is the equivalent of saying in the past 25 years, a quarter of our presidents have been Black therefore no bias exists against Black people running for the office.
How do you know? Where are the stats?
You missed the point. The percentage of Black people in the US has little to do with the percentage of actors who are Black. That’s why your stat is misleading. Your denominator is missing.
However, you are also missing the point that the zero nominations is only part of the critique. Few are saying zero nominations in and of itself must be bias. It is that there have been zero nominations in many years (two years running) COUPLED with the fact that there were specific performances this year, for example, that could have been nominated (eg. Idris Elba, Michael B Jordan) were not recognized. Additionally, you have odd circumstances like Stallone being nominated, but not his costar, who many argue was better, or the director (both of whom are Black).
Again, even if your conclusion is correct, your reasoning is specious.
I don’t see it. The first year listed, 2001, shows Denzel Washington getting the win over nominee Will Smith – just like 2004 shows Jamie Foxx getting the win over nominee Don Cheadle, just like 2008 shows Viola Davis competing against fellow nominee Taraji P. Henson, and so on, and so on. What am I missing?
If we were to assume that nominations were given out randomly (of course they are not, but I’m trying to see how out of line the nominations are) and that actors were selected randomly from the population (which again is extremely unlikely), we could check the probability of getting a given number of actors from a given ethnicity.
the 2010 census has the US population at 63.7% white, 12.2% black, 4.7% asian, and 16.4% latino, with the remainder being multiracial or islanders.
If I remember prob/stat from college correctly, the chance of getting no blacks in a specific category per year would be (1-.122)^5, or 52.2%. Which is basically a coin flip.
However, make that for all 4 categories (ie, with 20 draws), and that goes down to (1-.122)^20, or 7.4%. Which is still somewhat low, but if we use the usual stat cutoff of five percent for “statistically unlikely”, it’s not out of the norm.
If you look at Boyo Jim’s per year “Was a black actor in the category?” with a coin flip chance for that to happen if actors were drawn randomly, it’s doesn’t look horrifically out of the norm.
Of course this doesn’t mean there isn’t bias, just that if actors were cast/nominated randomly (they are not), we’d expect every other year to have no black actors, and having two years in a row like that isn’t especially surprising.
I thought Elba’s performance wasn’t eligible for an Oscar due to being a Netflix release and not a theater release, although that probably says more about my lack of understanding about the Oscars than anything about the movie he was in.
oh yes, I totally misread that
EyebrowsofDoom made one line for each nominee
not one line for each year
yeah
it has to be released in both NYC and LA and run for like 2 weeks I think… which I don’t think the Netflix movie was.
I’d agree, he did an excellent job in that movie