Editorial: Academy slow to respond to #OscarsSoWhite

This year’s Academy Award nominations heralded the return of a familiar pale face: #OscarsSoWhite.

It’s a repeated racial injustice decried by us everyday people who will never be anywhere near one of those statues. But would the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have responded to the outcry on social media if major celebrities didn’t begin to boycott the event?

Probably not.

After black celebrities Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith boycotted the Oscars for the lack of minority representation in the nomination pool, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs released a memo on Monday, promising “dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership.” The Academy will conduct a review of membership to bring “much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.”

“I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes,” Isaacs’ memo read.

But where was Isaacs’ memo last week, after the nominations were released and the hashtag began trending? It wasn’t until after major black celebrities began to publically boycott the event that she gave the Academy’s response.

While the review might end up yielding a more diverse nomination list in the future, there remains the deeper question of why the Academy is only just now conducting this review.

Although Isaacs is a black woman, she is one person against a large institution. Currently, 94 percent of the Academy’s nominating voters are white and more than 70 percent are male. Why? Do minorities and women not have good taste? What’s the Academy’s excuse?

#OscarsSoWhite is not a new issue — in fact, it happened last year, too. But when Vulture asked Isaacs about the lack of nominee diversity during that ceremony, she brushed it off as a non-issue.

“Not at all. Not at all,” Isaacs said when asked if her organization ignored diversity problems among nominees. “The good news is that the wealth of talent is there, and it’s being discussed, and it’s helpful so much for talent — whether in front of the camera or behind the camera — to have this recognition, to have this period of time where there is a lot of publicity, a lot of chitter-chatter.”

According to Time Magazine, only 6.7 percent of the 1,668 acting Oscar winners have been non-white. This problem didn’t sneak up on Isaacs or the Academy, and only they can change the system — and the industry — that created the problem.

Boycotting an organization clearly apathetic to your problems is an important act in preserving dignity. Lee and Pinkett Smith have made it clear that not all members of Hollywood are willing to accept being silenced, and in doing so, reiterated the need for representation.

The accolades we give to art should speak to our values. Let’s make sure all of us are at the judges’ table.