Let’s be honest, when has the Academy Awards ever truly celebrated Black excellence in film?  The nominees for the 88th Academy Awards were announced on January 14, 2016, and for the second year in a row no black actors or actresses were nominated. As this generation often does, they took to the social media to air out their rightful frustrations with the hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite. I really can not fathom why a lot of people are so surprised. 

Mainstream media often portray African-American youths, especially black men and boys, as criminals, crime victims and predators. These stereotypes, according to social justice advocates, can create a racially charged atmosphere that results in violence such as the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin. The perception of African-Americans and other people of color as inferior to whites are rooted in the nation’s legacy of racial hierarchy, a system of stratification based on belief that skin color makes whites superior. Despite popular belief in recent years with the strides that African Americans have made. Blacks are not the lesser! African-Americans are major contributors to the world and to everyday life.

U.S. popular culture has become increasingly desensitized to one-dimensional portrayals of black youths. Perpetuation of them as dangerous has been embedded in American society not only by words and images projected by journalists but also by a wide variety of other media and entertainment sources, including the Internet, movies and video games. Regardless of whether they believe in them or not, most people in U.S. society are well aware of the many stereotypes and images surrounding black males.

The film Ethnic Notions by Marlon Riggs, the film addresses all the ignorant stereotypes that have plagued African-Americans for hundreds of years. Ethnic Notions describes every common stereotype used to make African Americans feel inferior. The Tom, The Samba, The Mammy, The Coon, The Brute, The Pickaninnies, The Minstrels are the stereotypes used to describe blacks in cartoons, feature films, popular songs, minstrel shows, advertisements, folklore, household artifacts, even children’s rhymes. Some of these stereotypes are still alive and well today. Stereotypes such as the brute and the coon are still used to describe African-American males to this day.

These negative representations of black males are readily visible and conveyed to the public through the news, film, music videos, reality television and other programming and forms of media the typical roles are often the black sidekick of a white lead, for example, the token black person, the comedic relief, the athlete, the over-sexed ladies’ man, the deadbeat dad or, most damaging, the violent black man as drug-dealing criminal and gangster thug. Even black females are even still portrayed in movies and plays as the mammies or the ghetto girl. These stereotypes are extremely offensive and one can only wonder if they will ever be left in the past.

The country we live in has never been equal and it pains me to say that it may never be equal. Racism and prejudice is taught and it is not genetically implanted in us. Many celebrities have called for a boycott of the awards in an efforts of equality.  The first Academy Award given to an African American was in 1939, Hattie McDaniel received the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of “Mammie” in Gone With The Wind.  Since then, only 13 other African-Americans have won Oscars. The last award going to Lupita Nyong’o back in 2014 for her role as “Patsy”  in 12 Years a Slave. The first thing we must do as a race, is realize that we have strength in numbers. If something doesn’t sit well we have the right to change it .We also have to realize that we have the power in what we give power to. BET Awards and NAACP Image Awards should be seen just as important. We as a people need to reconfirm our faith and pride in our own race and culture, so that we as a people can rise up together.