Black directors should be rightfully recognized

The Academy Awards, otherwise known as The Oscars, began in 1929 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize and celebrate artists’ outstanding work in the film industry.  

The award itself – a knight standing on a film reel with five spokes – represents the original five branches the ceremony officially recognized: actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers.  

The Oscars now has 19 officially recognized branches ranging from makeup and costume design to animation and visual effects.  

Throughout the 98 years of the ceremony’s tenure, not a single Black person has ever taken home the award for Best Director.  

John Singleton was nominated for Best Director for his 1991 film “Boyz N The Hood,” which made him the youngest Black director to be nominated at age 24.  

Singleton was snubbed of Best Director and Best Original Screenplay awards and instead won awards such as the New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Best New Director at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.  

Spike Lee, who created cinematic masterpieces like “Malcolm X,” “Do The Right Thing” and “BlacKkKlansmen” was given an honorary award in 2015 by the Academy, but this honorarium does not count as an official Oscar Award for any of his work. Thus, making him another Black director snubbed at the ceremony. 

The list of snubbed Black directors continues with names such as: Barry Jenkins, director of “Moonlight” (2015) that won Best Picture,  Ava DuVernay, director of “Selma” (2014) nominated and lost for Best Picture and Jordan Peele, director of “Get Out” which won for Best Original Screenplay in 2017 but did not earn him an award for Best Director.  

This leads us to this year’s 98th award ceremony in which Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” a masterpiece with or without awards, was nominated for 16 Oscar categories and only won four. Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor while Ryan Coogler, nominated for Best Director, won Best Original Screenplay.  

While Michael B. Jordan is a masterclass artist in his craft and very deserving of this year’s award, I believe Ryan Coogler deserved the same level of recognition for his directorial talents.  

A similar instance happened years prior when “12 Years a Slave,” directed by Steve McQueen, won three Oscar Awards, which included Best Original Screenplay given to John Ridley, a white screenwriter, while McQueen received zero recognition.  

Let us go back in history for a moment to the year 1940 when Hattie McDaniel, the first Black person to ever win an Academy Award, was not even allowed to sit with her castmates at the all-white ceremony.  

Her entire career and acting roles were type-casted by an industry that saw people like her in roles of subservience and submission.  

Since 1940, the awards have become more inclusive than they were during that era, but when exactly will Black directors finally be seen as deserving of an award by the Academy for their hard work? 

This raises the concern surrounding actors and actresses always receiving more credit due to them being onscreen and in front of the audience rather than in the background.  

What many consumers of the arts fail to realize is the amount of work that has to happen in the background in order for the foreground to become the masterpieces that they usually are.  

The work of teams behind the camera and the work of teams in front of the camera are equally deserving of notorious recognition from the Academy, yet that recognition stops at Black directors.   

Time and time again, Black directors deliver films that spark conversation, influence culture, and raise the cinematic standard, and each time the broad institution of the Academy fails directors of color.  

When excellence is repeatedly acknowledged but not fully rewarded, it forces us to question whether the system is truly impartial.  

It is my hope that one day Black directors will not only be nominated but rightfully recognized with the award that has eluded them for nearly a century.