Oscars: A Parade Of Penguins

By Rev. Barbara Reynolds | SPECIAL TO SACOBSERVER.COM

(NNPA) - When turtles race, progress is so slow that the referees could use a calendar rather than a clock to chart the winner. While this standard is great for turtles, it is frustrating when you see it applied to blacks in the race to crown Hollywood’s best.

When I was a child growing up in the fifties, the movies and television were all about White people. Only Whites were used in advertising so it looked as if no Blacks used toothpaste, drove cars or bought groceries. The only Blacks on TV were Beulah, Rochester, Amos & Andy and Nat King Cole for a hot minute.

So today, who wouldn’t be happy for Forest Whitaker and Dream Girl Jennifer Hudson who Oscars this year? Those honors have been a long time coming and all is still not well. In the 79 years since the first Oscars were awarded, more than 350 Whites have been nominated for the top honor compared with less than 20 Blacks and only five have actually won for best actor or actress.

In 1939, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win the golden statute for her supporting role as a “mammy” in "Gone with the Wind." Yet, it was not until 63 years later in 2002 that an African American woman, Halle Berry, won the Best Actress Award for her performance in "Monster’s Ball."

In 1963 Sidney Poitier won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in "Lilies of the Field," but it would be another 39 years before another Black man would break the color line. In 2002, Denzel Washington received the top honor for his portrayal of a bad cop in "Training Day."

Black actors have suffered through Oscar droughts for decades. So the recent successes of Washington, Berry, Jamie Foxx and now Whitaker and Hudson can feel like a shot of long-awaited adrenaline.

When you consider the billions African Americans spend annually at the movies however, the lack of suitable roles for Blacks, especially actresses, plus the absence of Black directors, the equity factor is appalling.

Whitaker’s portrayal of Ugandan president Idi Amin in the "Last King of Scotland" was a tour de force. Yet, Hollywood’s persistence in greenlighting movies equating Black with evil, while virtually ignoring traits showing Blacks as rational or honorable is unacceptable. Idi Amin, who ruled Uganda, from 1971-1979 was a murderous lunatic who killed about a half million of his people. Africa has its shares of evil despots, but why not give equal time to heroes such as Nelson Mandela or Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of the modern state of Ghana?

Washington deserved an Oscar for his superb reconstruction of Malcolm X, but was honored in 2002 for playing an evil cop in "Training Day." In that film, Black as a symbol for evil was underscored in his character’s actions as a dope-dealing, thieving, womanizing cop, in the black hat, black sweater, black leather jacket he wore and the black Monte Carlo he drove.

In an interview on my XM satellite radio show, "Reynolds Rap," the screenwriter of "Training Day" told me that the script originally called for a white man to play the evil cop, but Hollywood executive thought a Black in that spot would be more credible.

The lack of roles for Black women who could compete for an Oscar in a starring role is glaring. Cicely Tyson has been one actress who told Hollywood she would rather not work than degrade herself in roles that present Blacks in a negative light. In an interview, she told me “I refuse to take those roles of whores, Barbie-type women, drug users and women of no substance.”

Too often when Black men gain the clout to change the scenario, they often outdo the white directors in denigrating Black women, one of the few groups it is still safe to crudely parody. Can you see a Jewish woman being treated as crudely as the African American woman in the new film "Norbit," starring Eddie Murphy?

Norbit has so many sleazy, gaudy depictions of an overweight, scantily-clad black woman that Boston Globe columnist Wesley Morris says the picture belongs in the Black Stereotype Hall of Fame. So, it is poetic justice that Murphy did not walk away with an Oscar for his role in Dreamgirls. It is time for blacks to quit playing the leading roles in the on-going drama of culture pollution.

Of the Oscars, Tanya Kersey, founder and executive director of the Hollywood Black Film Festival, said: “While Dreamgirls features a Black American cast, its writers, directors and producers were white. The problem is that Black filmmakers, such as John Singleton and Spike Lee, among others, still have yet to get the Oscar they deserve. So we're not talking about a Black film in the sense of Black stars, Black producers, Black directors.”

Once again we see the deceptive charm of Hollywood. While the men in their formal tuxedos may make Oscar night look like the parade of the penguins, the slow pace of history is reminiscent of a turtle trot instead.