Skip to main content

Al Sharpton blasts Hollywood for another year of all-white Oscars nominations

Al Sharpton blasts Hollywood for another year of all-white Oscars nominations

Share this story

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Al Sharpton has some thoughts on this year's Oscar nominations. The civil rights activist, talk show host, and White House advisor tweeted this morning in response to the reveal that not a single actor of color was nominated for an Oscar this year.

The Academy ignored potential nominee bids from actors like Michael B. Jordan in Creed, Idris Elba in Netflix's Beasts of No Nation, and Benicio Del Toro in Sicario. F. Gary Gray's Straight Outta Compton was only nominated for one award: Best Original Screenplay — and its screenplay writers were both white.

Sharpton's comments echo a criticism that the Oscars has been facing for years. In fact, last year's nominations also excluded all actors of color. This is partly due to the lack of diversity on the Oscars voting board. In 2012, the LA Times reported that the Academy was 94 percent white and 77 percent male, and things have only changed incrimentally since then. Ava Duvernay, who joined the Academy in 2013, tried to overturn Michael Mann in the director's branch of the Board of Governors (a subset of the Academy) this year, but he was re-elected for three more years, according to Fortune.