#OscarsSoWhite is a hashtag created to draw attention to the role and talent of people of colour in the entertainment industry. April Reign of Broadway Black and journalist at Nu Tribe Magazine, launched it on 15 January last year in response to the scarcity of people of colour nominated at the 2015 Oscars. The Academy had promised to take action, but this year too people of colour are barely represented at all, as can be seen in the official photo (above) — a sea of white faces taken on 8 February at the Oscar nominees luncheon. The hashtag has now gone viral, reaching more than two million accounts and setting the public debate alight.

Cate Blanchett, nominated for best actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Brie Larson, nominated for best actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Jennifer Lawrence, nominated for best actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Charlotte Rampling, nominated for best actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Saoirse Ronan, nominated for best actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Bryan Cranston, nominated for best actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Matt Damon, nominated for best actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Leonardo Dicaprio, nominated for best actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Micheal Fassbender, nominated for best actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Eddie Redmayne, nominated for best actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Jennifer Jason Leigh, nominated for best supporting actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Rooney Mara, nominated for best supporting actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Rachel McAdams, nominated for best supporting actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Mark Rylance, nominated for best supporting actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Alicia Vikander, nominated for best supporting actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Kate Winslet, nominated for best supporting actress © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Best supporting actor nominations © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Mark Ruffalo, nominated for best supporting actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Christian Bale, nominated for best supporting actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Sylvester Stallone, nominated for best supporting actor © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Celebrities speak out

Many celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Rooney Mara and George Miller, have released statements on the civil rights issue. Chris Rock, who will once again be hosting this year, has completely rewritten his monologue to address the subject as fully as possible. Sylvester Stallone, nominated for best supporting actor for Creed, threatened to boycott the Oscars as a show of respect towards co-star Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler, both Black. Will Smith and Spike Lee will not be attending the ceremony, and actor Idris Elba addressed the British parliament with a deeply felt speech on the matter.

#OscarsSoWhite Tweets

The outrage of Oscar winners

Hattie McDaniel was the first Black person to receive a statuette in the history of the awards. She won best supporting actress for her performance in Gone with the Wind in 1939. Since 1929, the year the Oscar was born, out of a total of 2,947 statuettes, only 33 have been awarded to people of colour (just over one per cent). Halle Berry has said it is "heartbreaking" to remain the only Black woman to have won the best actress award, while Lupita Nyong'o, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her performance in 12 Years a Slave, released a statement saying that "the Oscars should not dictate the terms of art in our society. I stand with my colleagues who are calling for the expansion of the number of stories to be told and want recognition for the people who tell them."

lupita nyong'o oscar 2014 — Lupita Nyong'o receives the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2014 © Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The Academy responds

More than 90 per cent of the chief executives and senior leaders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the Oscars, have been white. President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said: "This year we all know there is an elephant in the room. I've asked it to leave." The Academy was indeed put under pressure to resolve the controversy, and at the end of January an extraordinary board meeting was held at which a number of reforms to the voting system and three seats for new directors were unanimously approved.

oscar statuetta — The much coveted Oscar statuette © Christopher Polk/Getty Images

From #OscarsSoWhite to #BlackLivesMatter

Despite all this, the elephant is still in the room, and Stallone decided to attend the ceremony after all. This shows that the problem goes well beyond Twitter activism. The battle is real; the reasons that led to the creation of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite run deep and are firmly entrenched, yet at the same time entirely relevant today. In the United States, the Black movement is in the spotlight above all thanks to #BlackLivesMatter, a civil rights movement founded in 2012 following the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old who was killed by police officer George Zimmerman, who was subsequently acquitted of the crime. From the streets of the most violent neighbourhoods to the glamour of Hollywood, the fight against institutional racism can be said to be very much alive.

Translated by Francesca Clemente

#OscarsSoWhite, equality in Hollywood is still a distant dream