Why Shawn Doesn’t Care About The Oscars Anymore

This Sunday I didn’t watch the Oscars. Why? Because I’m tired of Hollywood patting itself on the back for slapping Black people in the face.

Yeah, 12 Years a slave won Best Picture. It was the first Black film by a Black director to win that “honor”.

Black people will celebrate this as an event. But when one takes a closer look at Hollywood it’s just business as usual.

Hollywood since the 1930s has only given praise to Black performers for playing the same types of roles: Slaves, Mammies, coons, whores, criminals, bucks and brutes. If a film featuring a Black actor fits within one of these categories, the White Liberals in Hollywood praise that Black actors’ performance and talk about how great they were.

However, if a film portrays Black people in a humanized way as intelligent people. The white liberal won’t celebrate it as an achievement.

Nor will Black people even endorse it. Because sadly, many Negroes don’t see themselves as human. Humanity is something most negroes can’t correlate with their existence.

If I made an All About Marilyn, Temptation of John Haynes, or a Thetas movie, it’d be a waste of money. Why? Because it features humanized images of Black people. That’s the kind of movie Hollywood would go out of its way to bury. Why? Because it doesn’t present the image of Black people White Liberals want to see depicted of Black people. And it’d be the kind of movie Black people wouldn’t want to see of themselves.

The whole idea of Black people portrayed onscreen as human equals to White Liberals scares the shit out of them. That would actually mean the Negro would actually have to take responsibility for his existence and stop playing the victim.

What Hollywood likes to praise are films White Liberal’s narrative about po’ miserable downtrodden Negroes who strive to be like their White Slave masters. Patronizing movies about submissive blacks who need a Great White Savior and need to do things the “White” way in order to be actualized. Films that promote the idea White Supremacy as the best thing to happen to the Negro.

Hollywood seems to love these kinds of movies. The Black person beneath the White person makes them comfortable. The whole idea of a Black person not being afraid of a white person or believing they’re equal to a White person in cinema is frowned upon. That’s why a film featuring such images will never even get greenlit by the White liberals who control Hollywood.

The Oscars don’t celebrate the best of Black film. They celebrate what’s popular for White Liberals. And what’s popular with the White liberal is trying to convince themselves that they aren’t racist. After all, if they give Negroes Academy awards too, then they aren’t racist.

Ironically it’s the roles they give Black actors Oscars for that shows how racist they actually are. A Black film can only get Best picture for being a slave movie. A Black screenwriter can only get a Best Screenplay Oscar for writing about Po’ miserable Black women like Precious. A Black woman can only get an Oscar for playing a mammy, a slave or a Jezebel. And a Black man can only get an Oscar for playing a crook, a coon, a slave or some other minstrel role that presents Black people in a negative light.

Over Twenty years ago when I aspired to create positive Black stories for Black people, I thought the Oscars were the award to win. A barometer of skill and talent. But after reading Syd Field’s Screenplay and finding out it’s just a popularity contest I now could care less about the Academy Awards. When it comes to Black performers it doesn’t measure quality. It just rewards buckdancing bojangling Negroes for playing roles that make White People comfortable about Black people.