Kia Makarechi Become a fan Senior Editor for Mobile and Innovations, The Huffington Post

Posted: 10/02/2013 8:37 am EDT Updated: 01/23/2014 6:58 pm EST

Hollywood's 'Race Problem' Is Worse Than You Think

Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Forest Whitaker.

In bleak situations, incremental improvements can be mistaken for big time progress. So it goes with Hollywood's consistent inability toinclude actors of color.

Popular critical consensus suggests that we may have as many as four black Best Actor nominees: Chiwetel Ejiofor ("12 Years a Slave"), IdrisElba ("Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"), Forest Whitaker ("Lee Daniels' The Butler") and Michael B. Jordan ("Fruitvale Station"). Ejioforis currently favored to win the category, where he'll probably be joined by the likes of Tom Hanks ("Captain Phillips"), Robert Redford ("AllIs Lost") and Bruce Dern ("Nebraska").

That these men of color are even being discussed in awards blogger circles is certainly cause for celebration, because each of their filmspresents a perspective that doesn't get much play in Hollywood. But insofar as these four movies are important, they are also limited by theirveracity. They're all based on true stories: "12 Years" tells the tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was captured and enslaved andwrote an autobiography by the same name; "Mandela" is selfexplanatory; "Fruitvale Station" centers on the 2009 shooting death of OscarGrant III, a black man shot dead by a police officer in Oakland; "The Butler" draws its meat from the life of Eugene Allen, a black butler whoworked for the White House for over three decades.

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Put another way, these roles have to be played by black actors. Each of these men has more than earned the nominations they're expected toreceive (now's a good time to pinch in some salt: awards bloggers love to shower performances with praise, but nominations are certainlynot guaranteed), but the fact that they're generally only rewarded for roles that literally could not have been given to white actors is cause forconcern.

"Generally only rewarded for roles that literally could not have been given to white actors" is not casual phrasing. A study of the roles thathave earned black men Best Actor nominations reveals that this is a historical problem. Sidney Poitier won in 1963 for playing a blackitinerant worker in "Lilies of the Field," a movie based on a novel by the same name. Jamie Foxx won in 2004 for playing Ray Charles in"Ray," and Forest Whitaker won in 2006 for playing Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland." The only black man to win Best Actor for a rolethat could have been played by a white actor is Denzel Washington, who won in 2001 for his turn as a LAPD detective in "Training Day."

That's one man over 85 years of Academy Awards. The situation isn't much better at the Golden Globes, where Morgan Freeman'sperformance as a chauffeur who triumphs over racism in "Driving Miss Daisy" joins the otherwise identical list of Best Actor winners. (Nor,it's worth noting, does the picture improve when including Best Actor nominees at the Oscars, a class that includes blacks playing "blackroles" such as Will Smith in "Ali," Don Cheadle in "Hotel Rwanda," Terrence Howard in "Hustle & Flow," Freeman in "Invictus," Washingtonin "Malcom X," Laurence Fishburne in "What's Love Got to Do With It," etc.)

Jordan has discussed enjoying filming "Chronicle," which he describes as a win because the character was originally supposed to be a whiteJewish man. "[With] the lack thereof of quality roles for AfricanAmerican actors, I look for stuff like that," he said in an interview withHuffPost Entertainment. "I want the script that Ben Affleck or Leonardo DiCaprio couldn't do because of scheduling. I want that one. I wantthose types of roles."

Hollywood is even worse at including women of color in awardwinning performances, (Halle Berry is the only black woman to ever win theOscar for Best Actress, in a "Monster's Ball" role with a complex and controversial relationship with race), and this year's Emmys were ashockingly whitemale affair. "12 Years," "The Butler," "Fruitvale" and "Mandela" all cleared an extra hurdle: they are are all independentlyfinanced films that were created without the interest or fiscal support of the major movie studios.

True equality in the Best Actor race doesn't mean only rewarding black men in roles white men could never play. Instead, we'll know whenHollywood casting directors and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences view people of color as deserving of equal opportunitiesto shine when a black man in the role of a fictional caring father, son, teacher, student, doctor, author or otherwise nonracially codedcharacter is nominated for and wins Best Actor.

Until then, however, let's raise a glass to this year's class of outstanding performers, because maybe, just maybe their success in this year'sawards rat race will jostle the shamefully whitewashed powers that be within the industry. Forgive me for not getting my hopes up.

This story appears in Issue 72 of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, available Friday, Oct. 25 in the iTunes App store.

Follow Kia Makarechi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kia_Mak

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