Solving the #OscarsSoWhite Controversy

[Strazdas]

Unless we can read minds, we have no way of knowing why they chose that particular film or actor over another.

Is this in response to me asking you what standard makes proof impossible? Because if so, I think you should probably be spending your time railing against the injustice of any legal system that includes murder, terrorism, and rape among its list of punishable crimes, since those crimes are distinguished from the mere acts that are their base (killing is not the same as murder, for instance) by motivation: by the knowledge and intent the person committing the act had at the time the act was committed. By the standard you have laid out, it is impossible to know any person's motive with certainty--even the accused person's own testimony could be inaccurate to do aphasia or a simple misunderstanding of words or false self-representation--so no person should ever be convicted of these crimes, because I cannot read John Wayne Gacy's mind and prove that his intent was to cause the deaths of children. I can only prove that it happened.

Since Oscars are supposed to be the measure of what's good and what's not, there is no way of saying that they are not picking better movies without it being just your subjective opinion.

"Good" and "bad" are subjective opinions to begin with. If anyone's subjective opinion is invalid on the basis of subjectivity, then everyone's is.

I haven't seen Crash, but it seems to be well liked movie by the general public. Once again it looks like you're translating "I don't like a movie they picked" into "They are racists."

I did not say one word about Crash being chosen for racist reasons. Please reread the post you are responding to. You were talking about how the Academy is infallible because no bad movie could ever be nominated, so I chose a bad movie that got nominated and won.

What? All the crimes you listed except perhaps terrorism is quite clearly defined in law with very provable possibilities provided evidence exists. On the other hand it is impossible to determine something as infallable fact if its based entirely on opinion, such as what is a good movie. Especially when one claims that the same institution whose job is to decide that is doing the opposite.

Well im glad that you are at least admitting of subjectivity being subjective and noone being able to tell the objective truth here. I agree with that. but if people want to start some sort of categorization, they probably should start with institutions whose job is to do that, like Oscars.

Yet you have failed (because its impossible) to prove that Crash is a bad movie. I claim that Crash is a great movie and deserved all 3 oscars it got. Your opinion is no more valuable than mine here.

 

[JimB]

I claim that Crash is a great movie

...

Approximately eight hours ago, you said this:

I haven't seen Crash.

I'm sorry, but I cannot credit you with arguing in good faith any longer, so I will no longer be taking your posts seriously enough to reply to.

 

[Strazdas]

I claim that Crash is a great movie

...

Approximately eight hours ago, you said this:

I haven't seen Crash.

I'm sorry, but I cannot credit you with arguing in good faith any longer, so I will no longer be taking your posts seriously enough to reply to.

I know. thats irrelevant though. because there is no objective measure for what is and isnt a good movie. so my claim of it being great, even despite me not seeing it, is as valid as anyones claim it isnt great. Thats the entire point i was trying to tell you.

 

[maninahat]

An almost entirely white panel has an unconscious bias in favour of white actors and directors. Why does that sound odd to you?

What we're having here is a collission of two worlds.

As a normal person I can't comprehend the idea of "All white people can't understand other people, so a white jury always has a bias". This because I don't believe in racism and can't accept "This race always does X" kind of logic.

If you rephrase what I said to something completely different, it gets hard for me to defend my argument.

You in turn can't seem to grasp the concept that attributing negative traits to all white people, based on prejudice, is the definition of racism. Unless I'm wrong and you realise(d) that insisting that white people can't be on a jury because all white people can't judge, is racism?

I'm not saying that unconscious bias is an exclusively white trait. An all black panel would most likely have an unconscious bias that favours black actors and directors. Everyone exhibits unconscious bias, which is why it is important to have a diverse panel, as opposed to a homogeneous one.

It's interesting you mention juries, because there is a long debate about the consequences of jury selection, racial discrimination against black jurors, and racial biases deciding court cases. The long story short is that lawyers know that the race of a juror does actually make a difference to the case, and some will (illegally) use it to try and get an edge.

 

[maninahat]

I'm not saying that unconscious bias is an exclusively white trait. An all black panel would most likely have an unconscious bias that favours black actors and directors. Everyone exhibits unconscious bias, which is why it is important to have a diverse panel, as opposed to a homogeneous one.

Can't help but feel that's just a tactical retreat now that "White people can't judge, cuz, white" has been accurately accused of being a racist statement.

If you knock it off with the straw arguments, it might not feel like a tactical retreat. Nowhere did I say that white people are incapable of judging, so stop insisting I did.

It's still nonsense to find someone unfit to be a judge or film critic based on their race. Heck, you don't even know them, and it shows. You literally didn't like that no black people had won, without any argument as to why a particular one should have won. You didn't think "quality job of this person, so, shouldn've won" but "Black, so, should've won".
That indicates racist thinking.

I think black people should have been nominated because there are Oscar worthy black performances this year. All things being the same, it is statistically highly unlikely for situations to keep cropping up where no black people have been nominated.

By contrast, if I as a non-racist wondered why no caucasian actors had won anything, I'd have said something like "It's strange Anderson didn't win best director, his performance in Grand Budapest Hotel was much better than that of the other director who won", preferably with a reason why included.

Doing it on a case by case basis seems like a way convenient way ignore the elephant in the room. If you thought it was odd that no caucasian actors/directors were being nominated, even if loads had made good movies, wouldn't you have to start questioning the judging process?

 

[Thaluikhain]

I don't believe in racism

No surprises there.

You in turn can't seem to grasp the concept that attributing negative traits to all white people, based on prejudice, is the definition of racism. Unless I'm wrong and you realise(d) that insisting that white people can't be on a jury because all white people can't judge, is racism?

Good thing racism doesn't exist then.

 

[madwarper]

Forgive me if I've overlooked this in the thread, but I think there has been a lack of discussion of Oscar politics; How certain movies are campaigning for/against that affects which movies get nominated/win the Oscars.

Love him or hate him, but if someone like Harvey Weinstein (the father of the modern Oscar campaign) were promoting films like Creed/Beasts with no Nation/etc. to the Academy members, then I have no doubt that they would have been much more likely to have been nominated for some awards.

 

[aba1]

I don't believe in racism

No surprises there.

You in turn can't seem to grasp the concept that attributing negative traits to all white people, based on prejudice, is the definition of racism. Unless I'm wrong and you realise(d) that insisting that white people can't be on a jury because all white people can't judge, is racism?

Good thing racism doesn't exist then.

Man if you didn't take that first quote out of context it was fairly clear that he meant that he doesn't believe in innate racism and just worded his statement incorrectly/poorly. Everything else he was saying was about how he doesn't feel it is a default position.

 

[aba1]

I don't believe in racism

No surprises there.

You in turn can't seem to grasp the concept that attributing negative traits to all white people, based on prejudice, is the definition of racism. Unless I'm wrong and you realise(d) that insisting that white people can't be on a jury because all white people can't judge, is racism?

Good thing racism doesn't exist then.

Man if you didn't take that first quote out of context it was fairly clear that he meant that he doesn't believe in innate racism and just worded his statement incorrectly/poorly.

Which was it? Was a statement taken out of context, or was it badly/incorrectly worded originally? You seem to be throwing something and hoping that it sticks. This of course, can be a problem with assuming that you know what another person online meant though.

Why not both . The statement doesn't really make 100% sense in its own context which is how you can tell he simply phrased his statement wrong. Then it was taken out of the context that prefaces what he actually meant and taken at face value. I mean normally ya I would agree you can't just assume what people mean online but the statement is contradictory to what he was previously saying as written and wouldn't really make sense. It is fairly obvious what he meant to say but if I am way off base here I do hope he comments to let me know.

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

We need to get the BET Awards to finally start giving credit to white people.
Right now, it's clearly a racist event.

#BETAwardsSoBlack

 

[maninahat]

If you knock it off with the straw arguments, it might not feel like a tactical retreat. Nowhere did I say that white people are incapable of judging, so stop insisting I did.

You said diversity is needed because they can't judge actors from others races, that clearly implies an underlying argument that caucasians are unfit to be judges because of their race.

No I didn't. I said a mostly white panel has an bias that favours white actors and directors. That is not the same at all as saying they are utterly incapable of recognising black actors. It is also not the same as saying such a bias is exclusively a white trait, nor that white people are incapable of judging. Similarly, me saying we should have diversity on the panel is not the same as saying we should have no white people on the panel. You are tilting at windmills.

I think black people should have been nominated because there are Oscar worthy black performances this year.

Couldn't help but notice you conveniently forgot to mention who exactly, and why. Is that because you didn't have any performance in mind and simply don't like whites winning for being the best actors, and instead want judging to be based on race?

No, it's because it wasn't necessary to allow me to make the point.

All things being the same, it is statistically highly unlikely for situations to keep cropping up where no black people have been nominated.

Okay, show us you're not thinking in terms of race and show us your numbers. Since I've not seen you do that before, I'll be nice and give you a list of data you need to calculate:
1 - Which percentage of actors is black
2 - Which percentage of all actors makes it onto the oscar nomination list
3 - Then calculate the likely probability of a single actor making onto the nominations list
4 - Then divide that number by the percentage you found at 1
5 - Then deduct that number 4 from the total number of actors
6 - Repeat the chance you found at 5 by ^5
7 - This is the probability of a nominations list without any black people on it

Suppose that probability would be below 50% or something, maybe then you could start to make a case. Good luck with your research.

Someone already did the maths. There is an article linked earlier in this thread. Here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/01/film-and-race

Doing it on a case by case basis seems like a way convenient way ignore the elephant in the room.

The elephant being racists on Twitter and in questionable media demanding for nominations based on race instead of a case-by-case review of talent and performance?

I mean, the Oscars are individual rewards for excellence, so case-by-case is literally the only way to go.

Which leads you to the argument that there were no Oscar worthy POC performances this year.

 

[maninahat]

No I didn't. I said a mostly white panel has an bias that favours white actors and directors.

That's quite a bold and slanderous claim, accusing the entire jury of racism. I look forward to you showing documents or other evidence of this conspiracy, or withdrawing your claims.

I could link you [https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=studies+on+unconscious+bias&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4x4KtvpXLAhXjFZoKHRJCBi8QgQMIHTAA&safe=strict] to a bunch of scholarly articles on the subject of unconscious bias if you like. But, assuming you aren't able to access them, I can forward you a test you can do on yourself to see if you yourself exhibit unconscious biases (hint: everyone does):
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Someone already did the maths. There is an article linked earlier in this thread. Here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/01/film-and-race

"Oscar nominations have not dramatically under-represented black actors." Thank you. And as we see in their numbers, including the social class correlation with ethnic group in the US, you could actually say black people have been overrepresented in the oscars, making up only 12% of the population, mostly lower social classes who could never make it to Hollywood, and yet winning 10% of all awards.

I am curious as to why you think a 12% section of the population getting 10% of awards is "over-representation"? Perhaps I am displaying some statistical ignorance, but surely that 12% would have to get more than 12% of the awards to be over-represented, whilst any less than 12% is under-representation? I'm also curious why you have not mentioned how over-represented white people are?

Which leads you to the argument that there were no Oscar worthy POC performances this year.

I've no idea what a POC performance is. Is that some genre of threatre or another term? Remember that I only speak four languages and "politically correct bollocks" isn't one of them.

It stands for "people of colour".

But anyway, back to the original issue of that paragraph, was the elephant in the room black supremacists argueing that the oscars should be given based on race instead of merit? Anything other than that, and case-by-case reviewing of people's performance is the only way to go.

No, it was that a competition that is supposed to be based on merit actually is disproportionately weighed towards white people, as demonstrated by the lack of black nominations this year, and other years too. Unless you think the judgement was fair and that there were no black performances worth celebrating, you can't argue there isn't something amiss with that selection process.

Also, "black supremacists"?

 

[Prepper247]

One more thought popped into my head. If they cast more roles with minorities, the nominations would be more balanced if I believe.

 

[Gengisgame]

One more thought popped into my head. If they cast more roles with minorities, the nominations would be more balanced if I believe.

Movies don't revolve around the oscars and sticking with theme by minorities I assume you mean blacks.

Blacks are a very small percentage of the cinema going population but are over represented, REMEMBER the cinema going population is not just Americans.