Credit: Olga Berrios/Flickr
ICYMI, Twitter blew up this morning with the brilliant hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
If you pay attention to these sort of things (and since you’re hanging out on Ravishly, it’s likely you do), you may have noticed that the list of Oscar nominations announced this morning was, um, overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon (and, more specifically, overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon male). So much so, in fact, that you have to go back nearly two decades to find a list of nominees as WASPy as this year’s roster.
Because Twitter is both terrible for and indispensable to humankind, it responded with the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, full of hilarious jabs at the Academy’s blinding whiteness and some sobering truths about its nomination trends . . . plus a few folks impotently trying to assert that this is all some big misunderstanding because 12 Years A Slave won last year.
Fueled in large part by the egregious snub of Selma in many key categories, the tweet campaign has opened up a dialogue about some seriously troubling issues—like the fact that, according to a survey from a few years ago, the Academy is 94% white.
Though at press time the hashtag has kind of devolved into tired jokes about white people (try to get to the end of the page without seeing something about a Pumpkin Spice Latte), it’s still full of very sharp observations from everyday tweeters. Read our favorite #OscarsSoWhite tweets published thus far below:
I'm a middle-class white dude in his 40s. And I'm really disappointed by this years's #OscarsSoWhite nominations. C'mon. It's embarrassing.
— Adam Kovac (@adamkkovac) January 15, 2015
#OscarsSoWhite, but its best friend is Black.
— Jax La Negra (@jax1125) January 15, 2015
#OscarsSoWhite They decided 9 nominations, 3 wins, including Best Picture, for 12 Years A Slave last year was enough.
— ImThe5thDentist. (@eternalkerri) January 15, 2015
#OscarsSoWhite that asian people are like "Hey remember in 1984 when Haing S. Ngor won Supporting actor? Ya me neither IT WAS 30 YEARS AGO!"
— Leah-Simone Bowen (@ladyblerd) January 15, 2015
#Oscarssowhite they can't see a problem in this - The diversity gap in the Academy Awards #Oscars2015 #OscarNoms pic.twitter.com/UOZLOM9Mnl"
— Media Diversified (@WritersofColour) January 15, 2015
@PaulKendrick84 #OscarsSoWhite it's 77% male, 94% white, w/ median age of 66. Not joke here, just facts.
— Ben Weingrod (@bweingrod) January 15, 2015
The tweets on this #OscarsSoWhite hashtag would be funny if the whole thing wasn't so disturbing.
— justin kanew (@justin_kanew) January 15, 2015
#OscarsSoWhite the only Asians represented on-screen are animated (Big Hero 6 and The Tale of Princess Kaguya).
— Ramsey Isler (@ramsey_isler) January 15, 2015
And, perhaps the sickest burn of them all:
@TheAcademy "We realize the #OscarsSoWhite so we felt the need to show a black person.
— Isaac van Bruggen (@isaac_andrew91) January 15, 2015
