PBS NewsHour: The Academy of Motion Pictures is best known for the Oscars, and for the controversy in recent years about the lack of diversity in its ranks and awards. Now the organization has opened a new museum in Los Angeles — said to be the largest in North America devoted to the art of filmmaking. Jeffrey Brown took a tour with one of its leaders for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.
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Acknowledgement of the performers and racism of the film industry is certainly a step forward in racial justice, however it erases the fact that the film industry, and the Oscars more specifically, have severe issues with racism that need to be addressed. I’ll start with the positive: acknowledging past segregation in film and telling the stories of actors whose stories haven’t been told is eye-opening. I personally didn’t know many of the actors and actresses that were mentioned in this article, and learning how racism was so codified behind-the-scenes is an important piece of history to know. However, it’s a little bold for this to be coming from the Academy of Motion Pictures, who has been slammed for having a very white body of members and nominating white people at disproportionately higher rates than filmmakers of color. It’s easy for white people to talk about fighting racism as it was 50 to 100 years ago, but it seems like a deflection from the racism that the Academy is perpetrating now. It’s a good step forward, but the Academy needs to leverage the power it has in the present if racial justice is something it wants to commit to
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