Sharpton Rips Oscars Over Lack Of Minority Nominees
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The Rev. Al Sharpton blasted the Oscars on Thursday for the lack of diversity among this year's nominees.
Most notably, the civil rights film "Selma," about the struggle for equal voting rights in 1965, received just two nominations -- for Best Picture and Best Original Song.
The nominations were announced Thursday. The awards will be handed out Feb. 22.
WEB EXTRA: Full List Of Nominees (pdf)
No minority actors were nominated in the Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor or Best Supporting Actress categories.
"The lack of diversity in today's Oscar nominations is appalling, and while it is good that Selma was nominated for 'Best Picture,' it's ironic that they nominated a story about the racial shutout around voting while there is a racial shutout around the Oscar nominations," Sharpton said in a statement. "With all of the talent in Selma and other Black movies this year, it is hard to believe that we have less diversity in the nominations today than in recent history.
"The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher you get, the whiter it gets," he added.
PHOTOS: 2015 Oscar Nominations
As CBS2's Tracee Carrasco reported, the topic exploded on social media and trended on twitter under the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
Joe Pichirallo, Chair of the Film and TV Department at NYU agrees.
"The movie industry, like other industries in America, has got a diversity issue. The LA Times did a study a few years ago showing that over 90 percent of the Oscar voters are white, over 77 percent are men, and less than 50 percent are under 50," he said.
At this week's Golden Globe Awards, "Selma" was nominated for Best Motion Picture (Drama), while David Oyelowo was nominated for Best Action in a Motion Picture (Drama) and Ava DuVernay for Best Director in a Motion Picture. Its only Golden Globe win was for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture, for Common and John Legend's "Glory."
Oyelowo missed out on an Oscar nomination.
"He did an amazing performance and I think he deserved a little more recognition for that," NYU film student Ben Levitsky.
Pichirallo said this year's list reflects an independent film spirit.
"I like that some of the independent movies are getting some play," he said, "We're a long ways away from the days of Forest Gump, Braveheart, Gladiator, big budget mainstream Hollywood movies were winning best picture year in and year out."
Sharpton said his National Action Network has formed a task force to address diversity in the movie industry.
David Edelstein, film critic for New York Magazine and "CBS Sunday Morning," called the lone nod for "Selma" in a true film category a "token nomination."
"I know that's a racially loaded word," he told WCBS 880. "But I think the stakes were against it racially. There was a lot of talk about its historical distortions, particularly undermining the role that Lyndon Baines Johnson played in kind of cooking up the Selma march with Martin Luther King. There's truth to that.
"There was also this crazy issue of screeners," Edelstein added. "You know how academy members get screeners? And the ones in 'Selma' weren't shipped in time."
Edelstein said there also are rumors that Hollywood doesn't care much for "Selma" producer Oprah Winfrey, and that, because "12 Years a Slave" won the Best Picture trophy last year, maybe academy members "thought they acquitted themselves in terms of historical injustice against African-Americans."
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