When bias, or nepotism, cronyism,... become the most likely explanation for disproportionaliy, something needs to be done that the market will not take care of on its own.
Sure, if you’re a leftist that relies solely on the government to fix all of your problems. Instead of running to the government, run to fair markets. In a fair market, if there is discrimination, that entity will not survive in the long run because a competitor will snatch up the disenfranchised individuals.
As far as society’s bias towards white actors, if it’s true, it means that black actors have to work harder or make movies that aren’t just about “black life” (any Tyler perry movie). I like Denzel and DiCaprio fairly equally (a lot). But there are far fewer Denzel’s in Hollywood and far more Anthony Anderson’s. Also subject matter for the targeted audience matters. If you’re making a movie where blacks make jokes about “white boys”, you’re expected to put off a fairly large segment of American population (your audience). Instead of focusing on changing why whites (or any customers) aren’t watching the movies, focus on making racially neutral movies targeting as many people as possible. I mean this isn’t rocket science. A movie is a product, and you have to position your product to attract as many customers as you can. Movies like inception, Shawshank redemption are racially neutral so they will target 100% of the market. Movies like Tyler perry will target 13% of the market, because they’re solely about black culture which seems to be very uninteresting to someone who has little experience with it (a white person). An all black cast means nothing to me because I’m not a racist. If they’re good and the story is good I’ll watch it. If the dialogue is 80% Ebonics that I’ll barely understand, I’ll pass. You don’t change customers you change the product.
Kind of harsh to call "leftist" and to claim that anyone has suggested anything at all about government solving this.
I promise you that it is possible to have conversations with people who have different perspectives without name-calling or marginalizing by claiming extremism. As far as I am concerned, I think the issue is a good one to discuss because I think disproportionality tells us something about society -- not always sure exactly what and not always the same thing -- but that's the point of the discussion. There are far fewer people that you think who actually want the government to solve everything. And with regard to the issue that I raised here (only for discussion and not asserting firm conclusions), I never said, nor did I even suggest, anything having to do with government intervention. Actually I find the idea of government involvement in racially-balancing movies an absurd idea. How about that -- you agree with a "leftist"!
While you haven't explicitly stated government involvement, "something needs to be done that the market will not take care of on its own" is leftist anti-capitalistic rhetoric. You're about to propose either government intervention or regulations placed by event leadership to give disproportional votes to designated disenfranchised people. In a fair capitalistic market, the only relevant color is green. It sees no other color, lifestyle choice, or pronoun. If you are an ideologue, you must either find a very specific niche targeting other similar ideologues, or you will go out of business. Therefore to run away from the market is to impose biases. You want to pick the winners. Two questions: "Who would pick?" and "How would that ever be fair?" For example (and not to go too far off topic, but it's related): I hear it all the time that Obama saved the car industry and the banks. No he didn't. He picked a winner. Was it fair that GM got 40 million more than Chrysler? What about smaller business that felt the effects of the recession but got nothing? You can't just have the government hand companies a bunch of money whenever they screw up. For a period in time, these companies had to answer to the government. That's very similar to communism.
My suggestion: If you want the Oscars to be more fair, run TOWARDS the fair market: open up the voting to the public. That way maybe it doesn't take DiCaprio 20 years to win an Oscar.
Sounds like you know more about pure capitalism than I do, so I won't argue the point other than to wonder whether there is something in between pure capitalism and "leftist" that still contain tenets of capitalism and doesn't require pure capitalists to shut-down the discussion. I may be wrong, but I don't see myself as leftist or anti-capitalist. But I do accept that there is role for some central governing in my ideal world and that there is a role in a capitalistic (not capitalist) society for decisions made based on values other than money.
And in the case that I am wrong about there being leeway for impurity in capitalism without being anti-capitalist, I'll just say -- can't we have a conversation without calling out different views with extremist labels? Probably helps no one to do that -- and it's likely we do live in a society in which most of us rest comfortably somewhere in between the extremes.
My apologies if I sounded like I was trying to shut you down. It's hard to have an argument online without sounding like an ass or using emojis because letters don't have vocal tone.
There certainly is such a thing between a pure capitalist and leftist. The vast majority live there. I live there. A pure capitalist, which is probably best defined as an anarcho capitalist, is someone that believes that aside from a small local government to handle criminals, there should be no government. Think wild west with a sheriff and jail in each zip code, and crapping in a hole in your backyard because "Who owns the pipes?" These are basically nut jobs, in my opinion. Just as nutty to me are pure leftists such as Socialists and their much more evil cousin Communists that believe that a national government should handle almost everything. They decide how much you are paid, they decide how much you can spend on a car. If your furniture costs more than what everyone else has, you can be fined or jailed. An American Liberal is actually a pretty globally centrist position (think Bill Clinton, Al Gore, etc). I used to be a liberal until the word liberal took about 80 steps to the left with the Bernie Sanders crowd. I left that crowd about halfway into Obama's first term.
The great debate of all time has been how much involvement does the government need to have? The answer should, in my opinion, ALWAYS be "as little as possible." I don't think the Oscars should be regulated. It already IS regulated because only a select group of individuals are allowed to vote. If you open up the voting to paying customers who spend money to watch the movies, you're much more likely to get accurate winners based on merit, not skin color or agenda. That's why when you go on Rotten Tomatoes, the user review is much better than the critic. I don't really want to know the PhD review of a movie. Was it fun to watch or not?