Raw Data: How #White Are the Oscars, Anyway?

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The chart on the right shows the trend of black Oscar nominees in the four acting categories by decade. In the most recent decade—including the past two years, in which no blacks were nominated—there were 18 black nominees, which amounts to 9 percent of all acting nominees during that period. Here’s a comparison (for Americans only) with top positions in other fields:

  • 4-star military officers: 13 percent
  • Members of Congress: 10 percent
  • University presidents: ~3 percent
  • Senators: 2 percent
  • Nobel Prize winners: 1.1 percent
  • Fortune 500 CEOs: 0.8 percent
  • Billionaires: 0.2 percent
  • Governors: 0

POSTSCRIPT: Most of the #OscarsSoWhite backlash has come in the acting categories, which is why I made this chart. The odd thing about this is that the acting categories are a gaudy aurora borealis compared to the paleness of the rest of the awards. With the exception of songwriting, a grand total of eight black artists have been nominated in every single other category over the past decade. Here are the percentages:

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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