MINORITY REPORT 2002--
REVISTING DIVERSITY IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

With Denzel Washington winning for Best Actor (Training Day), Halle Berry for Best Actress (Monster's Ball), Sidney Poitier receiving an honorary Oscar for his distinguished career, and Will Smith having been nominated for Best Actor (Ali,), African-American actors experienced a Kodak moment at the 74th Academy Awards. To top it off, this year the award show was held at its new home, the Kodak Theatre, in Hollywood, California.

Poitier's award and presence made it more special, as he had been the first African-American actor to win for Best Actor in 1963 for Lillies of the Fields. African-Americans and people of color waited 39 years for the torch to be passed for the Best Actor category and 74 years for Best Actress. In her straight-from-the-heart acceptance speech, Halle Berry paid homage to the female actors who had paved the way for her: Dorothy Dandrige, Lena Horne, and Diane Carroll. She also flamed the fire for those who follow in her footsteps stating, "…this is for every faceless woman who now has a chance because the door tonight has been opened."

LA Times staff writer Lorenza Munõz reported "Hollywood is a difficult industry for nonwhites. From 1990 through 2000, only 21 nonwhites (including Asians, Native Americans, African Americans, and Latinos), or about 9% of the Oscar nominees, were included in the top five categories: leading actor, leading actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, and director. Only two--Whoppie Goldberg (supporting actress in Ghost) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (supporting actor in Jerry Maguire)-won. (Lorenza Munoz, "Famous First, They Made History," LA Times, March 25, 2002, "Calendar Section," p. F-4.)

In 1999, the struggles of nonwhite actors in the entertainment industry gained new momentum when a coalition of minority groups (representing African-Americans, Asian-Pacific Islanders, Latinos, including the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans (MANAA), the East West Players, Asian-American Coalition for Total Inclusion on the Networks, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and other Latino and ethnic organizations) that the NAACP had organized held a series of meetings with TV network executives from the four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) to negotiate the hiring of more minorities in the 1999 fall line-up of TV shows.

In May of 2001, the coalition criticized these networks for not honoring what had been agreed to 16 months earlier. In the spring of 2002, a series of showcases gave minority actors the chance to be seen and the networks the chance to improve their diversity efforts. But some industry insiders are skeptical if these efforts will result in seeing more people of color on TV.

And while Hollywood's record should speak for itself, industry-insiders also comment that Hollywood is really more color-blind than other industries because the only color it sees is "green." But does Julia Roberts prize her Oscar for Best Actress in Erin Brockovich more than her status as being Hollywood's top-paid female actor? So even with Halle Berry's and Denzel Washington's record-breaking achievements at the 2002 Academy Awards, only time will tell if actors of color will have more opportunities to star in Oscar-potential roles, in those five major Oscar categories. Likewise, only time will tell if these actors of color will gain more opportunities to bring greater diversity on TV.

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