Whoopi Goldberg insists the Academy Awards can’t be all that racist since she won, that one time — twenty five years ago.
During a Monday broadcast of The View, Goldberg once again chimed in on the #OscarsSoWhite backlash, voicing a counter argument to other A-listers who insist they aren’t given equal billing.
“The issue is not the Academy,” Goldberg said, in reference to critics of the organization’s history of unapologetic whiteness. “Even if you fill the Academy with black and Latino and Asian members, if there’s no one on the screen to vote for, you’re not going to get the outcome that you want.”
“I won once. So it can’t be that racist,” she continued. “You need directors and producers who will say, ‘Hey, what about so and so?’ They need to be aware that the picture is not complete.”
Many have pointed out that Goldberg’s statements lack nuance, since plenty of eligible movies that were widely hailed as “Oscar contenders” by critics were left out of categories that still had empty slots left over to accommodate them.
Given that only 15 black actors have ever won an Oscar in over 80 years, Goldberg’s win is decidedly an exception to what usually occurs at the annual awards ceremony.
Yet she isn’t letting those stark facts dissuade her from her stance.
“You wanna boycott something? Don’t go see the movies that don’t have your representation,” Goldberg advised on The View. “That’s the boycott you want. To me, we have this conversation every year. It pisses me off.”
Since we won’t be seeing anything like this in 2016, check out the footage below from Goldberg’s win in 1991. Before this moment, it had been 51 years since another black woman (Hattie McDaniels) made history as the first black woman to receive the honor.
That’s one hell of a time lapse for an institution that isn’t that racist.
