2020 is turning out to be the year of the white man; whether in the presidential race or The 92nd annual Oscars, both competitions are lacking diversity and both are right around the corner. The Academy Award nominations were announced last week and the only people of color included this year were Cynthia Erivo who was nominated for her portrayal of the freedom fighter in Harriett. We bet that Erivo will walk away with the golden statue for a song “Stand Up,” that she co-wrote with Joshuah Brian Campbell, also apart of the film which received another nod in this year’s Oscars announcement. 
Another film of color that was recognized included Matthew Cherry’s Hair Love. Earning recognition in the Best Animated Short Film category, Hair Love centered around a black father combing his daughter’s hair for the first time. St. Louis Superman, Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan, a film about a rapper voted into the House of Representatives was nominated in the documentary short film category. Looking at the odds for this year’s Academy Awards, Sports Betting Dime believes that Cynthia Erivo’s odds of winning are +3500. The Academy loves us in slave films.
Although these two films represent wonderful stories of our culture this year, the Academy chose to focus on films that they believed to be Oscar-worthy What’s particularly frustrating about the slate of movies deemed Oscar-worthy this year is that there were plenty of creators telling compelling stories that looked different from the norm, from Eddie Murphy’s return in Dolemite Is My Name to Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Fransisco and Jordan Peele’s Us to Melina Matsoukas’ Queen and Slim. Despite a push to play diversify in the last few years, it looks like the powers that be at the academy still prefer Caucasian-led stories over gritty social commentary or intimate tales that straddle two generations, or historical stories about forbidden love.
This year the Academy Awards will be held in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theater on February 9, 2020, and are as white and non-representative of people of color as it was back in time to 2015 when viewers threatened to boycott the festivities. Dubbed the “whitest Oscars” since 1998, 2015 saw not one African American actor or actress in the running. Black Twitter went wild with comparisons of the awards show over the 87 years since it’s existence. The #OscarsSoWhite began trending and we believed that things would be different. They couldn’t get any worst. But here we are again, #OscarssoWhite that we predict that at least one of the two nominees will win or at least we hope.
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