Calls for Oscar boycott over lack of non-white nominees spark debate

As calls for a boycott of this year's Academy Awards over the all-white list of acting nominees intensifies, the academy's president issued a statement late Monday promising a more intense drive to diversify the largely white, male voting body. But not everyone agrees that the nominations are intentionally skewed.



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"This is a difficult but important conversation, and it's time for big changes," Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement released Monday night. "The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond." As calls for a boycott of this yearand#39;s Academy Awards over the all-white list of acting nominees intensifies, the academyand#39;s president issued a statement late Monday promising a more intense drive to diversify the largely white, male voting body. But not everyone agrees that the nominations are intentionally skewed. This is a difficult but important conversation, and itand#39;s time for big changes, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement


Isaacs' statement came after director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith each announced that they would not be attending the Feb. 28 ceremony.

In a lengthy Instagram post, Lee said he "cannot support" the "lily white" Oscars. Noting that he was writing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Lee -- who in November was given an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards -- said he was fed up: "Forty white actors in two years and no flava at all," he wrote. "We can't act?!"

Lee made a point of writing in his post that the Academy Awards is only part of the problem in an industry with deep-rooted diversity issues. In his Governors Awards speech, Lee said "It's easier to be the president of the United States as a black person than be the head of a studio."

"The Academy Awards is not where the `real' battle is," wrote Lee on Monday. "It's in the executive office of the Hollywood studios and TV and cable networks. This is where the gate keepers decide what gets made and what gets jettisoned to `turnaround' or scrap heap. This is what's important. The gate keepers. Those with `the green light' vote."

In a video message on Facebook, Pinkett Smith, whose husband Will Smith wasn't nominated for his performance in the NFL head trauma drama "Concussion," said it was time for people of color to disregard the Academy Awards.