Source: David Livingston / Getty
Diversity has always been a huge complaint against the Oscars, so much so that more recently there have been celebrities that have not attended the awards show in protest of the exclusion of people of color. A prime example is that with the illustrious long career that actor Samuel L. Jackson has had playing in Oscar nominated movies, until Sunday night he has never won not one Oscar, and at the age of 73 he was finally awarded a Honorary Oscar Award. Unfortunately the incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock played into the misconceptions and more importantly took the spotlight off of those people of color who had won awards that night stealing their shine.
One of those people was Questlove, of legendary band The Roots that is also the house band of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, won an Oscar for Best Documentary for Summer of Soul a moment that Questlove and his producer as well as his filmmaking team was robbed of.
Chris Rock was on stage at that moment to present the Oscar for the documentary category when the slap happened, Chris Rock attempted to keep the prestigious ceremony on track and announced Questlove’s documentary “Summer of Soul” as the winning film in its nominated category.
“Summer of Soul” producer Joseph Patel said in a now-deleted tweet that Will’s actions “robbed” him and his filmmaking team of their celebratory moment.
“It robbed the category of its moment. It robbed the other excellent and amazing films of their moment to be acknowledged in what was a STRONG year for docs.”…“What both Will AND Chris did really stained what should have been a beautiful moment for us.” -read more
Although everyone is tired of talking about this unfortunate situation the truth is many people were effected by Chris Rock’s joke and Will Smith’s slap.
Source: Radio One Digital
