By Quibian Salazar-Moreno
Even though Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, and Forest Whitaker are up for Oscars this Sunday, Jesse Jackson isn’t satisfied with what he’s seeing in Hollywood. Back in 1996, Jackson protested the Academy Awards because of the lack of melanin being nominated. Now Jackson wants to remind folks that just because there are a few people of color nominated for Oscars, everything isn’t equal in Hollywood.
"While I feel joy for those outstanding performances, my concern is that people will take these as a substitute for progress," Jackson told Daily Variety. "We want to keep the light on unfinished business. It’s really an issue of infrastructure. The voting doesn’t at all reflect the current reality of the population."
According to Jackson, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the folks who vote for the Oscar winners, needs to be expanded to include more African-Americans than the current 110 of 5,830. Jackson is in L.A. this week to begin planning an April conference to face this list of issues, according to Variety:
Hosts on many cable networks are nearly all Caucasian, or as Jackson puts it "All day, all night, all white."
Minorities have limited access to jobs at major talent agencies.
Casting of minority actors remains a problem, Jackson noted, pointing to a UCLA study by Russell Robinson, released in December and showing that found 69 percent of Hollywood roles were reserved for white actors.
iHipHop Admin