Oscar Can’t Fix It

It’s March, it’s Oscar season, I’m writing an article for a great metropolitan newspaper, so that must mean there’s some craziness going on with African Americans in Hollywood.

The last time I wrote a piece on black people and gold statues was about eight years ago when spotting a black person at the Academy Awards was as hard as ... well, spotting a black person at the Academy Awards. This year, it’s a whole new Oscar show. You’d have to travel nearly three decades in the Way Back Machine to a time when three--count ‘em, three--black people have been nominated for Oscars in the same year.

And not those cut-rate best supporting Oscars, but the guaranteed-to-meet-leading people variety: Will Smith in “Ali,” Denzel Washington in “Training Day,” and Halle Berry in “Monster’s Ball.” And they’ve got to have put in some great performances to get those nominations ‘cause I don’t know anybody who’s seen more than one of those films.

Plus, as a bonus, the great Sidney Poitier is being tossed one of those honorary “thanks for still being alive” Oscars they give away every year. So, with all that, you’d think it’d be a great day for black folk in Hollywood. You’d think. But behind every statue of a naked man is a little controversy.

There are a lot of people, mostly outside of Hollywood, making a big deal out of whether this year’s Oscar race is truly a turning point for blacks or just a blip on the fluke meter. Do nominations mean long-term gains for black artists, or come the Monday after the Sunday of the awards show, will talented brothers and sisters with Yale acting school degrees still be lining up for bit parts in keepers like “How High”?

Sure, some actors got a nod, but where are the nominations for black directors, sound recorders and craft servicemen? Darnell Hunt, director of the Center for African American Studies at UCLA wonders, “Will this turn out to be more of a symbolic gesture than an indication that things are fundamentally changed?” Kweisi Mfume, the top dog at the NAACP, was quoted as saying: “Almost 90 years after D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ and ... we’re still at the same point, asking the same questions. Why are so many roles and so many individuals overlooked by the academy?”

The academy.

And that right there is the problem with the rumpus du jour: Things in Hollywood may stink for blacks, they may keep on stinking, but they’re not going to get any better using the Oscars as a measuring stick for any kind of achievement.

I’ve got a real problem wrapping my head around the idea of the Oscars being of any real consequence. It’s not like they’ve ever been a contest measured in fairness. Is it fair Cher’s got one and Betty Bacall doesn’t? That Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton got blanked seven times each? Most actors go to their graves without so much as getting invited to an after-party, let alone being nominated for an award.

And you can’t say the academy has ignored legitimately great performances from Hollywood’s best African American talent: Washington, Poitier, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lou Gossett Jr., Morgan Freeman, Dorothy Dandridge, Paul Winfield, Adolph Caesar, Diana Ross, Whoopi Goldberg.... So unless somebody’s talking about instituting some kind of quota system for people of color--and if so, then I’d say Latino and Asian American talent have got the biggest beef if, unfortunately, not the loudest lobbying groups--I’m not sure there is or can be a requisite number of blacks nominated each year.

But more than anything else, nominations or no, do we really need Hollywood to hip us to outstanding performances by black actors? Does anyone really take pride in having their artistic abilities judged by the same people who bestowed upon us “Driven” and “The Wedding Planner”? Maybe the guys who did the “Rollerball” remake consider it an honor, but personally I admire the likes of Sean Penn and Woody Allen, cats a little too secure to need other people’s approval.

That there’s any kind of rowdy-dow over three nominations makes it pretty obvious that blacks still have a long way to go in show biz. When Juneteenth Day finally arrives in Tinseltown, it’ll be easy to spot. It’ll be the day when three or four or 10 minorities are nominated in three or four or 10 categories and nobody cheers and nobody complains and I’m not writing any articles about it. It’ll be a great day when a rainbow of people getting Oscars is just another day.

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John Ridley, a regular contributor to National Public Radio, is developing three television pilots for the 2002-03 season. He is also readying the release of his fourth novel, “A Conversation With the Mann,” and wrote and is executive producer of the upcoming Universal film “Undercover Brother.”