Hunt on Minority Snub at 2015 Oscars
January 16, 2015 — Bunche Center Director Darnell Hunt was featured in a number of stories about the exclusion of minorities from major category nominations for the 2015 Academy Awards. Indeed, there were no minority actors nominated for the 20 acting award slots, only the second time this has happened since 1998. And despite being released to critical acclaim, Director Ava DuVernay’s Selma was shut out from nomination in all but one of the major categories (Best Picture). DuVernay, who would have been the first African American woman nominated for Best Director, was also snubbed by the Director’s Guild earlier in the week. Read Hunt’s commentary in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post HERE and HERE, and view his interview on KABC -TV HERE.
For more information on the Bunche Center’s 2014 Hollywood Diversity Report, please click HERE. The 2015 Hollywood Diversity Report is slated to be released by the Bunche Center on February 25, 2015.
Pure bs for this year. The acadamy will have more members who are black as they show themselves to be qualified.
I’m intrigued. Can you specify what you mean by “qualified” here?
The writer of a column I just read on another site posits:
“Here’s a crazy thought: Oyelowo wasn’t nominated because more voters thought Steve Carell, Bradley Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Keaton and Eddie Redmayne were better in their roles…. And DuVernay wasn’t nominated because more voters thought Wes Anderson, Alejandro Inarritu, Richard Linklater, Bennett Miller and Morten Tyldum did a better job with their films.”
Could it be that it really was that simple? I mean, to snub is to basically ignore with disdain. If Academy members quietly harbored such feelings, why a Best Picture nomination for a movie with a predominately black cast & writer?