During a recent CNN interview with several “Hollywood heavyweights” about the lack of diversity among this year’s Academy Awards nominees, film director Spike Lee chided his “progressive” counterparts in the industry for not being “active” in this “movement.”
“Hollywood has many times in the past been active with progressive movements,” Lee said. “I would like to see more people step up because we’re going to be on the right side of history.”
“We’re not going,” Lee said, referring to the calls to boycott this year’s Oscars ceremony. “Even with the changes the made, which I think are great, we’re still going to be at the Nicks game.”
Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle chided those blaming racism for the “so white” Oscars, saying, “I don’t think there is a cabal of white people going, ‘let’s make sure we don’t give anybody who’s black or Latino . . . I don’t think that’s what’s happening.”
Ahead of the 88th Oscars airing later this month was last week’s 22nd Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, which went out of its way to furnish a win in the diversity column by awarding several black actors with the coveted trophy.
As Breitbart News reported:
Four black actors—Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Uzo Aduba and Queen Latifah—went home with major awards, and Elba received two. Of the ten awards handed out to individual actors, a full half went to black actors.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to diverse TV,” said Elba, presenting an award after Davis’s win.
The 88th Academy Awards will air on Sunday, February 28, on ABC.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson.
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