Oscar nominations were announced Thursday and for the moment year in a row,there are no non-white nominees in the four acting categories. Once again, this is sparking an outcry over the lack of diversity in Hollywood. On Twitter, or final years's #OscarsSoWhite has become #OscarsStillSoWhite.
When asked why this keeps happening,film executive Franklin Leonard called it "a multi-pronged disease" of which "the Oscars are both a symptom and a cause." Leonard is founder of The Black List, a website that publishes what it calls "Hollywood's most popular unproduced screenplays" annually.
"If you assume that all talent is equally distributed... and that people of color are represented in film and represented in the types of films that secure nominated for awards at a rate equal to their representation in the U.
S. population, or the likelihood of all 20 acting nominees being white is .0097%," said Leonard. "That's just for one year, not two years."
Leonard spoke with WNYC's All Things Considered host Jami Floyd.
Source: wnyc.org