There is so much going on in the news of interest right now, but I have been thinking and reading a lot about the announcement of the Academy Award nominees that happened last week. In all of the nominations for the top categories—best director, best picture, and all four acting categories, only one nominee is a person of color—the rest are white.

I believe that the whiteness of the Academy Award nominees reflects that our society continues to default to recognizing the brilliance of white actors, directors, and other movie folks to the exclusion of brilliant actors, directors, and movie people of color. There were, by many accounts of Hollywood critics, a number of black and brown actors and directors who had outstanding performances in 2015. It seems that there are many reasons for people of color being overlooked for the awards—-the racial composition of the voting members of the Academy and their racial consciousness, the network of power in Hollywood, which is dominated by white people, the subject matter of “black” films being allegedly difficult for many to watch, to name a few reasons floating around. In other parts of the entertainment world, there is somewhat more diversity—at the Grammys, at the Emmys, on American Idol, and in competitive sports such as the Superbowl, recent tennis championships, and the NBA championships, we see black and white award winners. Award winners that are Latino, Asian, Native American, among other racial groups, are scarce.

What does this have to do with us as educators? Our country just honored and celebrated the life of Dr. King who famously called for a time in which “…(his) four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I am worried that our young people of color, here in our school and across the country, in this particular awards process, witness only whiteness at the pinnacle of the entertainment world and receive a clear message—even if you are brilliant, talented, and accomplished, the top awards are not accessible to you unless you are white. It is a familiar, frustrating, and insidious narrative that has persisted throughout our country’s history in regards to race.

I want us to stand in resistance to that narrative. I want us to change the narrative within our sphere of influence. I want our school to be a place where we regularly highlight and celebrate excellence in all shades of skin color. I want students to see other students, community members, parents, educators, and celebrities who share their cultural and/or racial background being celebrated and honored publicly. This shows up in who is on our honor roll, who is in our honors and AP classes, the composition of our student government, who are our students of the week. We want students to see people who look like they do receiving top awards and see clear and supported paths for how to achieve those honors themselves. There is more need than ever for the presence, in real humans, in curriculum, in posters on the walls of brilliant and successful people of color so that our young people have role models and inspiration. I want our students to know that their hard work, their brilliance, their passion will be recognized and honored when they achieve great things.

Big events like the Academy Awards open opportunities for us to be in dialogue with our students about this issue of racial patterns of recognition. We want our students, of all racial backgrounds, to notice patterns of achievement by race in the wider society and question them. It is through such ongoing discussions that we help them make sense of what is happening, feel supported in taking a stance of challenging and questioning, and develop a sense of their own power to interrupt the patterns.

Here’s yet another reminder how important our work is. Thank you for doing it with me. I want to leave you with a quote from Dr. King as you begin your week: “With patient and firm determination we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every mountain of pride and irrationality is made low by the levelling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom.”

Related Data

– “There were 305 films eligible this year. If hiring reflected the U.S. population, Oscar voters would have weighed 150-plus films directed by women, 45 directed by blacks, 50 by Hispanics, and dozens of movies by directors who are Asian-American, LGBT or members of other minorities. Of course, the actual tallies were a fraction of those numbers.” Gray, Tim. “Academy Nominates All White Actors for Second Year in Row.” Variety 14 Jan. 2016. Print.

– All of the 20 acting nominees were white actors.

– One of the five best director nominees was a Mexican director.