Demand for diversity at Oscars undermines minorities

The Academy Awards people are in a lot of hot water for not including any minorities in this year's nominations for the Oscars. 

Actor Will Smith told Robin Roberts in an interview this morning that he, along with his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, would not be attending the Oscars next month because it would be "awkward" to attend in light of the row about the lack of minority representation among this year's acting nominees.

Smith added that this year's nominations suggested Hollywood was "going in the wrong direction."

Would Smith and all the other protesters prefer Hollywood go in the direction of choosing nominees based on the color of their skin, not their talent? 

The question I don't hear being posed is, where is the proof that the voting board failed to choose any minority nominees because of race? Could it be that they just didn't feel certain performances warranted a nomination because they weren't that good?

Granted, the nomination process is predominantly subjective. But again, there is no proof that racism was at play here. If anything, this is nothing more than a perfect example of a manufactured crisis.

But with all the Hollywood hoopla over this, you can bet that next year's voting board will be pressured to include minority nominees. And then what? Do we doubt the minority nominee's validity in being nominated and instead assume they're only there because they are black? Isn't skin color supposed to not matter? 

What then if the black nominee doesn't win the coveted statue? Will there be protests over that, and then the following year will the Academy be pressured to make sure the award goes to the black nominee? Won't that just turn the Oscars into the BET Awards - which is already a truly segregated ceremony that has little representation of white people?

To force affirmative action on the Oscars is to dilute the accomplishments of black performers because any awards a minority wins would now be seen as orchestrated, not earned -- and that would render all awards meaningless. The bottom line is, you can't force a nomination and then expect that nomination to really have any merit to it. Besides, how could a minority even feel good about being nominated under such orchestrated circumstances? What an insult, in fact.

It's a shame that political correctness has no boundaries and that Academy Award-protesters would rather a minority receive a trophy just for showing up than to earn it for being the best. 

Congratulations to the left: They just reduced the Oscars to a modern day version of Pee-wee League - and made skin color an issue it never should have been.