Will Newly Diverse Academy Give Out Diverse Oscars?

After the #OscarsSoWhite controversy last year, the Academy has made pains to make their voting body a lot more diverse. Now this year, we’ll see what difference that makes this year’s Oscars.

Last year, the Academy members were 25% women and 8% people of color. Wow, that really was super white. This year, after including a great deal of new members, the voters are comprised of 46% women and 41% people of color.

With this drastic change in membership, will this result in a more diverse selection of movies achieving the industry’s most coveted awards? This year the chances are pretty good that we’ll avoid another year of blinding whiteness, mostly because there were a number of good films made that starred people of color. Last year, there was only Straight Out of Compton.

More important than the Academy Awards giving out more of their actually meaningless statues to a wider range of people is the fact that Hollywood is now actually making diverse movies. Now, that may be a fluke of this year, but hopefully, it’s a sign of the industry looking to broaden its audience.

And white people, don’t worry. La La Land will probably win and it’s definitely the whitest movie of the year. So, things aren’t changing too fast.