BAFTA criticised because all the winners were white

They don't play the race card, they play the guilt card.

Black people have been so historically oppressed and marginalised by white Europeans and Americans, that it's no wonder many Black people still feel aggrieved. It will still take a long while for a level playing field to be achieved, and for Black people to truly have the same rights as white people.

However, that doesn't mean that in the meantime we contrive 'balance' and 'fairness' by simply nominating and awarding Black people in such competitions, to make up for the legacy of trans-Atlantic slavery.

By all means, we need to see more money being invested in quality films featuring POC, which in turn will hopefully lead to more Black nominees and award winners, but BAFTA and AMPAS voters shouldn't be obliged to favour Black artists if they felt that a white artist did a better job in a given year. The means by which POC are able to be recognised need to be improved, but in this instance, I don't think it's fair to conflate equal opportunity (which *does* need to be improved) with equal outcome (which is something that should not, in principle, be tampered with).

Your first paragraph is important to note. 'POC' are minorities in 'the west' (USA, UK etc). It stands to reason by the law of averages that they'll always be under-represented to a degree until/unless they become the majority of the population.

For the record per the 2011 UK census black people are only 3.0% of the UK population.
They're 12.4% of the US population circa 2020.

If anything black people are grossly over-represented in mainstream western media. Definitely when compared to other ethnic minority groups such as South and East Asians, North Africans and West Asians, Native Americans and multi-raced Hispanic peoples.

If representation in the entertainment industry followed the census ratios then only 3/100 UK actors and actresses would be black.


These people do not want actual fair representation, they want affirmative action as such, they want to be over-represented to make up for the racism of yesteryear. They will not be happy till they're winning over 50% of the awards. If one 'POC' had won an award at this years BAFTAs the narrative would have been 'only one POC won a BAFTA'. They'd still be complaining.

These people are race obsessed idiots looking for racism to bitch about so they can feel like human rights warriors. They're using the 'racism' tag to bully awarding bodies into giving 'POC' awards. It's pathetic.

Agreed! But even then, it's all subjective, so how does one sincerely determine that the omission of POC from the awards is a display of 'racism'? I'm not definitively saying "it's not a factor" but this is one of those occasions where I don't think the outcome can necessarily be used as an example of systemic prejudice.

Trust me, it's not just you.

💯

Precisely Otter.

Systemic racism, particularly within the professions, including the performing arts, *is* still a major problem, but, as you say, some of the complainers hurt their otherwise reasonable cause by complaining about the *wrong* things (or maybe they're trolls who are intentionally hurting otherwise righteous causes, not that I'm prone to conspiracy theories). It gives the right/conservatives ammunition to decry their *entire* cause.

Admittedly, I'm highlighting the stupidity here, but not to decry the overall case against racism, but to hopefully sift out the nonsense from the *legitimate* grievances. And complaining that 'too many BAFTAs went to white people' doesn't strike me as a legitimate basis for an otherwise reasonable argument against systemic racism.