Editorial: Discussing Oscar Voter Demographics, Diversity, and More

When The King’s Speech won Best Picture over The Social Network at last year’s Academy Awards, it confirmed something I had suspected for a long time: my personal views on most films do not align with those who cast votes for the Oscars. Over the past year, The Los Angeles Times did some digging and recently published an investigative report uncovering many of the identities of Oscar voters, and the results are staggeringly one-sided: of the 5,765 voting members, 94% are white, 77% are male, 2% are black, and less than 2% are Latino. Just below we can take a look at what those numbers actually mean. Keep reading! Looking at statistics like that, it’s easy to instinctively jump to cries of racism and picketing. But the LA Times interviewed many Academy members, and their testimonies are pretty revealing. Denzel Washington, who won Best Actor for his performance in 2001’s Training …