BAFTA criticised because all the winners were white

🤦‍♂️

Here is one of the criticisms:

“Business as sickening usual. Watch how they’ll try to style it out, ‘Ultimately, the best people won on the night regardless of colour etc etc. Oh & we had Alison Hammond & other Black women presenting & nominated so we can’t be racist!!'”

Yes, that's usually how awards work. 'The best people win on the night regardless of colour'. I don't understand the argument. Should the various individual BAFTA voters, who I presume vote separately and within conspiring as a committee, simply vote for POC regardless of whether they think they were or weren't the best?

And WTF was Alison Hammond even doing there? What is her contribution to cinema?

I DESPISE racism. I have more instinctive sympathy for Black people than pretty much any other oppressed and marginalised minority, but I really don't understand the logic here. Should awards simply be given to POC to 'prove' BAFTA isn't racist? And when mediocrities like Alison Hammond are given such a high-profile role, can we truly say that 'Black people have to work 10X harder than everyone else'? Then again, the media is awash with various white, Black, male and female mediocrities these days, so perhaps I'm being unfair in singling out Hammond.

And before anyone says it, yes, we need more Black representation in film, and in theory 19% of awards should be going to POC, seeing that 19% of Britain's population are POC, but that's not the fault of BAFTA per se, and prize-givers shouldn't be obliged to give awards to POC if they don't genuinely believe they were the best in their field in a given year.

Am I wrong? 🤷‍♂️