Misogynoir-The Newest Category at the Oppression Oscars

A Hollywood actress and director are crying racism and misogyny for their Oscars snubs. Chinonye Chukwu directed the 2022 film Till, which dramatized the tale of Emmett Till, a young boy killed in 1950s Mississippi. Danielle Deadwyler played the movie’s leading female role of . The bitter Hollywood elites are upset over not being nominated for Best Actress and Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards, and instead of taking any personal responsibility, they have invoked the hackneyed trope of white supremacy.

The day after the Oscar nominations were announced, Chukwu took to Instagram to air her grievances. “We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards Black women,” she wrote. Taking her cue from Chukwu, Deadwyler pushed the same narrative during an interview saying, “We’re talking about people who perhaps chose not to see the film, we’re talking about misogynoir- like it comes in all kinds of ways, whether it’s direct or indirect.”

Misogynoir is a fabricated term concocted in the academic social science laboratories of oppression. Coined in 2010 by Moya Bailey, the term is a portmanteau of “misogyny”—the hatred and mistreatment of women—and the French word “noir,” meaning black. Therefore, “misogynoir” is the hatred and mistreatment of specifically black women.

Bailey’s biography states that she is “an assistant professor in the Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies and the program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University. Her work focuses on Black women’s use of digital media to promote social justice as acts of self-affirmation and health promotion.” If you find yourself wondering what any of that word salad means, you are not alone. It is simply academic-speak for “waste of time and money.”

While this is the first time the Academy Awards is being accused of misogynoir, it is not the first accusation of racism. In 2016, “#OscarsSoWhite” trended on different social media platforms insinuating that the awards show had a lack of diversity and inclusion. Since then the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced new regulations to promote equity, but that commitment is not good enough for the loud and arrogant Hollywood starlets.

The rise of woke ideology and the increased popularity of identity politics brought on by the progressive left in the country seems to be indirectly proportional to personal accountability and humility. Failure is never one’s own fault anymore. I didn’t fail because I didn’t try hard enough or because someone else simply performed better; I failed because that group of people hates my immutable characteristics and the world is against me. That victimhood mentality leads to hatred, resentment, and invariably more failure causing the cycle to repeat itself and the effects to compound. The reality is there are dozens of reasons why Chukwu and Deadwyler did not receive Oscar nominations that have nothing to do with their sex or race.

However, there is a silver lining to this story. Perhaps Hollywood is not as woke as they appear in front of the cameras. They talk the talk, but they are not walking the walk. Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are made up of all types of Hollywood professionals, and they are the ones responsible for making Oscar nominations. Membership in the Academy is reportedly “obscure” as there is no public list of members, thus the people voting and nominating have a level of anonymity.

The Hollywood elites know the repercussions of not nominating a person of color, no matter how much he/she may not deserve it. They assuredly knew that by snubbing Chukwu and Deadwyler, the two women would raise cane and shout “Racism!” from the top of the Hollywood Hills. Frankly, my dear reader, they didn’t give a damn. As long as they are ensured anonymity and accusations of racism cannot be directly linked to them, they feel empowered to vote as they want. Merit based recognition still has a chance. In Hollywood, it’s equity in the streets, but equality on the nomination sheets.