Jesse Jackson Rips ‘Hollywood Apartheid’ in Op-Ed on #OscarsSoWhite

Rev. Jesse Jackson blasted the American film industry for largely excluding African Americans from its latest batch of Oscar nominations — saying the “shameful snub” amounted to a “Hollywood Apartheid.”

In an op-ed published in USA Today, Jackson was critical of the Academy, but noted that “the growing outcry over the whitewashing of the prestigious golden statue and the industry it celebrates is a sign of at least some progress.”

Jackson wrote:

Today, some of the biggest names in show business — black and white — are speaking up and out about what amounts to Hollywood Apartheid. They are stars such as Jada Pinkett Smith, Spike Lee and Danny DeVito, who recently told the Associated Press that “we’re living in a country that discriminates” and that the nomination process was an “example of the fact that even though some people have given great performances in movies, they weren’t even thought about.”

For the second year in a row, the performers and filmmakers nominated for the major awards were almost exclusively white — resurrecting last year’s hashtag #OscarsSoWhite and kicking off rounds of backlash and counter-backlash from actors and industry watchers.

Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith, and Spike Lee expressed their intention not to attend the ceremony. Fox News’s Stacey Dash came under (a lot of) criticism for suggesting that a more effective road to integration would be abolishing the BET Awards or Black History Month. Oscar-nominated actress Charlotte Rampling suggested in an interview that a call for diversity was “racist to whites” (remarks which she later clarified).

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its efforts to double its number of “diverse members” by 2020, in response to the criticisms.

Jackson noted in his op-ed that the lack of diversity in the Oscar nominations was reflective of the boardrooms and executive offices of the motion picture industry. “I applaud President Boone Isaacs and the 51-member board of governors,” he wrote. “But the lack of diversity starts long before the stars pose and parade on the red carpet come Oscar night.”

[h/t USA Today]