Hollywood's Real Race Problems

I'll be honest.  When I first heard the chorus of complaints over the lack of Oscar nominations for black actors this year, I thought it was a little overblown.  The Academy has awarded numerous black performances when it was less diverse than it is today.

But then I started thinking about those performances.  It's shockingly easy to put them into three categories:

• Saints: The Sidney Poitier model.  Reward a character who is basically perfect so you can pretend you're not holding black people to a higher standard.  More recent examples: Denzel in "Glory," Morgan Freeman in "Million Dollar Baby."
• Sinners: Do I even need to say why this is a category?  Denzel in "Training Day," Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland," Mo'Nique in "Precious."  Three of the most vile characters ever to net Oscars for their performers, all played by black actors.
• Sufferers: Nothing like a little suffering to invoke the white guilt!  Besides, it's a position we're used to seeing them in.  See Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball" and Lupita Nyong'o in "12 Years."  Hattie McDaniel and Octavia Spencer played maids to white people, which is its own form of suffering.

There's only five winning performances I haven't mentioned.  Two fit comfortably in the categories above.  The three exceptions:

• Whoopi Goldberg played a psychic, which opens up its own can of racial worms.
• Jamie Foxx won for playing beloved musical icon Ray Charles.
• Cuba Gooding Jr. won for yelling "Show me the money!"

In this environment, it's tough for many black performers to even be considered.  The studios for "Creed" and "Straight Outta Compton" didn't bother to mount serious Oscar campaigns for their black actors.  It didn't occur to them that they could win.

Michael B. Jordan's performance in "Creed" is exactly the kind of performance that needs to get more attention: one that could easily have been played by a white actor.  In fact, Jordan has publicly said that studios won't consider him for many roles.  They automatically assume they're going to cast a white guy.

And that's the bigger issue here: there aren't enough roles for black actors in the first place.  Only a handful of black performances could even have been in the Oscar conversation this year.  Black actors need jobs, roles, opportunities to share their gifts with the world.

One last note: let's not forget that this conversation needs to be extended beyond black actors.  Where's the love for Benicio Del Toro in "Sicario"?  Not to mention...actually...I can't think of any others...