The President Of The Academy Vows For More Diversity In The Voting Group

As the Original Aunt Viv slammed Will and Jada Pinkett Smith for boycotting the Oscars, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of the Academy, responded to the backlash. Idris Elba, Spike Lee and David Oyelowo all spoke out about the diversity problem in movies, and Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement that the Academy has taken some steps to diversity the lily white voting pool, but she knows they’re not moving fast enough.

I already said this in a Leonardo DiCatchAHo post, but The Los Angeles Times did a study on the Oscar voters and they found that most of them are old white dudes. In the statement that the Academy twatted out, President Cheryl said that they’re going to make changes right now.

“I’d like to acknowledge the wonderful work of this year’s nominees. While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, 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. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.

As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly. This isn’t unprecedented for the Academy. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was about recruiting younger members to stay vital and relevant. In 2016, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together.”

Naughty Gossip also said that this year’s host Chris Rock is getting pressure to quit that bitch, but he’s staying on:

“Many leaders in the black community think he would help progress be made if he quits his hosting job at the Oscars. Chris is listening to what they have to say, but thinks he will have a bigger impact by doing the show. He thinks it is easier to make a difference from the inside. Chris has already started to write white people jokes for the show.”

There’s really a simple solution to all of this. The Academy should drop all of its current members and replace them with the judging panel of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The Drag Race judges will choose the nominees and then those acting nominees will have to try to win the award by performing a scene from their movie live at the Oscars. Remember when Star Search had an acting category in the 80s and wannabe actors had to act out a scene in front of the audience? That category was almost better than the spokesmodel category. The Oscar nominees should have to do that and we’d all call in to vote for a winner. Star Search is long gone now, but it still has all the answers.

Pic: Wenn.com