OK... According to whom? And who is evaluating the quality of said films?
The Academy, obviously.
Uh, no. This is not about probabilities. This is not a random process, where every actor has an equal chance of getting a nomination every year. It's about demographics and evaluations of merit.
The awards are not random, they are allegedly based on merit. There are 20 awards given out to actors every year. If the nominations reflected the population as a whole, 12% of nominations would go to blacks. Technically, that's 2.4. Over two years, that should be 5 nominations.
That's the problem right there. "Demographics," and representation there of, have absolutely nothing to do with this. Black actors and directors are not entitled to a certain number of Oscar nods simply because they happen to make up a given percentage of the population. That's simply not how this works.
They'll get the awards if they actually put in performances noteworthy enough on their own merit, as well as in comparison to competition from other actors, to warrant them in the eyes of the Academy. The simple fact of the matter, I'm afraid, is that they haven't done so for the past couple of years.
I'm sorry, but none of the performances you've listed strike me as being objectively "better" than the ones which were nominated to any significant degree. They are, at best, "in the same ballpark."
Granted, the logic of the Academy is occasionally obtuse, esoteric, and pedantic by any estimation ('Johnny-come-latey's' like freaking Jared Leto and Jennifer Lawrence warrant Oscars, but veteran actors like Leo and Murray don't?), and some of that does have to do with both the subjective nature of the medium, and the internal politics of the industry (I've often heard it said, for example, that the academy will award a consistently good actor with an Oscar for an only 'so-so' performance simply to make up for past snubs). However, that's simply the nature of the beast. Both white and black actors alike fall prey to that.
Trying to make this into any sort of racial issue is simply asinine. The bottom line here is that black actors win less because there are A) fewer of them, and B) they don't commonly turn in truly "wow"-worthy performances to begin with. Absolutely
none of that warrants "special treatment" to somehow "even the odds."
It's a private institution, and it can direct itself as it pleases.
Gotta disagree with you on that one. The promoters of the "White Savior Complex" definitely do not qualify as "politically correct." If Dances With Wolves came out today, it would be eviscerated for it. Movies like The Help, The Blind Side and even Avatar got dinged on this point.
Well, it didn't come out today. Now did it?
For it's era, it was
exceptionally "PC" (both of my parents hate it with a passion for that exact reason, in point of fact). Even today, it's still undeniably a rather Lefty film.
