Commentary: Oscar nods point to an old white boys club

I’m feeling a lot of the outrage since the announcement of the Academy Award nominations — namely, that all 20 lead and supporting nominees in the acting categories are white for only the second time in 14 years.

Shocked? Don’t be.

The truth is that this is a lily-white entertainment establishment and an overwhelmingly Caucasian industry except when it has to be something else — as when a film like “12 Years a Slave” captures the zeitgeist and becomes a cultural phenomenon and everyone is forced to vote for it out of some combination of genuine belief and duty.

But otherwise, if there are a large number of nominees of color, it’s likely something closer to an accident.

To my mind, this isn’t a matter of overt racism so much as prejudice by omission. The lack of racial diversity in Hollywood is less a purposeful act of oversight than one driven by a dearth of thought and awareness.

I’m sure that even Oscar voters themselves awoke Jan. 15 genuinely surprised not to have nominated a single performer of color. It simply doesn’t cross their minds unless someone reminds them.

Maybe part of the reason for that is the fact that the voting membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is 94% white. It’s also 77% male and just 14% younger than 50 years old.

It is, in other words, the oldest and whitest of the old white boys clubs.

So while it’s a little infuriating that the undeniably deserving David Oyelowo failed to land a lead actor nomination for his incandescent performance as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the historical epic “Selma,” it is something less than a big surprise.

Ditto the snub of Ava DuVernay’s direction for the same film. Both were favorites to be included in the mix.

This isn’t to say that those who made the cut instead were any less worthy, simply that they weren’t black. And when you take note of the racial and demographic composition of the Film Academy, it kind of makes sense.

Why should this kind of whitewash be business as usual? Because as far as we have come in terms of racial equality, understanding and diversity, and as much as we like to think we’re now better and more evolved than this, Americans still tend to flock to their own. We don’t want it to be true. We want to be color blind. But it’s a simple fact that we generally aren’t.

I’m part of this equation myself even while believing with all of my heart that I pay no attention to skin color. If I’m being honest with myself, I admit that I will often go out of my way on the other side to favor people of color and other ethnicities (not just black but Latino and Asian) in the interest of encouraging and embracing the melting pot that surrounds us.

If you take a look at the way the Emmy Awards roll, you’ll see something similar in the Oscars process. Some Emmy acting categories have never awarded a statuette to a performer of color.

The racial and age makeup of the Film Academy clearly cries out for reform, since the older and more set in one’s ways, the less likely to be open to anything more than tokenism when it comes to nomination inclusion.

This is unfortunately how it works. There’s an outcry, then things change the following year or for a few years hence, and then it goes back to the way things were. And the cycle repeats.

Not that any of this is overwhelmingly important in the grand scheme. Not when people are being massacred by crazed religious extremists and bloodthirsty racists on the other side of the world.

This is only showbiz we’re talking about here, boys and girls. But at the same time, the Oscar situation speaks to something larger in this country that’s clearly disturbing. That is, our actions don’t always match our words when it comes to race.

RAY RICHMOND has covered Hollywood and the entertainment business since 1984. He can be reached via email at [email protected] and Twitter at @MeGoodWriter.