Once Again, Oscars Snub African Americans

Hollywood’s big night is upon us. But unlike past Academy Award telecasts, for which I’ve donned my formal bathrobe, put my feet up and followed along on my office pool ballot, this year I will quietly boycott the festivities. After decades as Oscar’s biggest fan, I’ve come to an unsettling conclusion: Spike Lee is right--the Academy Awards are racist.

“With African American artists in front and behind the camera,” Lee has said, “the Academy has been slow to recognize their work. This is not sour grapes or playing the angry black man, it’s just the truth.”

I agree. This year, once again, none of the 25 actor, actress or director nominations went to blacks; nor do any of the 15 best film or screenplay contenders (with the exception of “Bulworth”) concern matters remotely connected to the African American community.

While I’ve often taken issue with what Lee sees as this nation’s vast white-wing conspiracy, I give his Oscar theory two thumbs up. As a home video reviewer for magazines, I’ve screened scores of movies in the past decade that never made it to my neighborhood, films by and about African Americans escorted black cinema from mean streets to family dining room table, painting a vivid portrait of the African American middle class. So why are these efforts never rewarded with a seat at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion?

I admit that of all the years I picked to lodge my living room sit-in, this was a dubious one for black filmmakers. The offerings were slim in ‘98, with only Lee’s “He Got Game” bubbling to the surface as an extraordinary peek into one family’s domestic turmoil. And this makes me wonder if Oscar has more power than we realize. Has the Academy’s endless snub of black movies sent filmmakers fleeing the business or, perhaps, crossing over to more Caucasian climes? What are we to think when director Carl Franklin--whose famously ignored “Devil in a Blue Dress” (1995) packed every bit the style, suspense and smarts of Academy darling “L.A. Confidential” (1997) but never saw gold--finally scored an Oscar nomination this year for his lead actress, Meryl Streep, in the whiter-than-white “One True Thing”? What kind of message does that send?

Even “He Got Game” presents a curious example of the racism question. Here’s a film whose themes are parental fealty, responsibility and the concept of manhood, set against the backdrop of basketball fever. Why did the Academy overlook this potent cinematic cocktail when, in the past, it awarded similar efforts “The Great Santini” and “Hoosiers” with Oscar nominations for its actors? What is this telling us? “White men can’t jump, but they sure can act?”

There are dozens of other examples of this disturbing double standard, including John Singleton’s “Rosewood” (1997), which told the story of the vicious annihilation of a black township in Florida in the 1920s, summoning up the same kind of palpable hate so chillingly recreated in the Holocaust epic “Schindler’s List.” But “Schindler” earned Oscars; “Rosewood” faded to black.

In 1997, the overlooked “Eve’s Bayou” featured actress Jurnee Smollett as a Southern child who helplessly watches her family unravel. Like “Paper Moon’s” Tatum O’Neal and “The Piano’s” Anna Paquin before her, Smollett proved that a little body can deliver a big Oscar-worthy turn. But try telling that to the Academy, which for all the attention the film got, presumably never saw “Eve’s Bayou.”

Speaking of performances, how is it that Oscar recognized Whoopi Goldberg’s talent in the white love story, “Ghost,” but turned up its nose at her gripping stint in the 1996 civil rights drama “Ghosts of Mississippi”? Or for that matter, what of Djimon Hounsou’s breathtaking turn in last year’s “Amistad”? What’s interesting is that the Academy recognized the films by nominating James Woods for “Ghosts of Mississippi” and Anthony Hopkins for “Amistad”--both white actors.

The list goes on. I thought this disturbing trend might end last year with the Academy finally awarding Lee an Oscar for his nominated documentary, “Four Little Girls,” a heartbreaking account of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. No such luck; the film was nosed out at the wire by “The Long Way Home,” a Holocaust chronicle.

You can find “Four Little Girls” at your local video store, where, thankfully, most of Hollywood’s best Academy Award losers are now showing.