Best Actress Continues to Taint the Oscars Diversity Record

While having five past winners present the acting categories once again went over well at the 2024 Oscars like it did in 2009, the Best Actress category will present a challenge toward optics should it become an annual tradition. There are only two women of color in the 96 years the Oscars have existed who have ever won the award. Would Halle Berry, the only Black Best Actress winner, and Michelle Yeoh, the only Asian Best Actress winner, swap presenting duties year by year? Otherwise, it would be an all-white lineup of presenters.

Not that other categories have a perfect history of diversity, either, but the problem is much less stark. {snip}

That is the core of why there are many passionate feelings about “Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone, the first ever Native American nominated for Best Actress, losing the Oscar to “Poor Things” actress Emma Stone, already an Oscar winner beforehand. Again, it took 96 years just for a Native American to have a chance at winning Best Actress; it took Emma Stone only seven years to win the category a second time.

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In terms of the racial makeup of this year’s Oscar winners as a whole, there was still quite a bit of diversity. For example, “American Fiction” filmmaker Cord Jefferson, “The Holdovers” star Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and “The Last Repair Shop” co-director Kris Bowers were the three Black winners from 14 nominations. A similar win ratio to last year.

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