Blacks score golden year with high Oscar profile

LOS ANGELES -- It had never happened before, three black performers nominated in the lead-acting categories for the Academy Awards. Surely, it was a sign that Hollywood's top honors finally were catching up with the nation's cultural diversity.

That was for 1972, though. It took 29 years for it to happen again -- with Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball," Will Smith in "Ali" and Denzel Washington in "Training Day" getting nominations for 2001.

Rarely a standard-bearer for racial inclusion, the Oscars offer possibly their highest profile ever for black performers next month. Besides the three acting nominations, Whoopi Goldberg, one of only two black women to win an acting Oscar, returns as host. Sidney Poitier, the only black to earn a lead-acting Oscar, receives an honorary award for lifetime achievement.

Black advocates like the lineup for the Oscars on March 24 but hesitate to say it marks a turning point for an awards ceremony traditionally dominated by white performers. Some say it could be an anomaly, a rare year such as 1972 that produced three Oscar-worthy performances by blacks, or last year when two Hispanic actors earned nominations, with Benicio Del Toro winning the supporting-role honor for "Traffic."

"It's progress, but no net gain. In a sense, we're where we were in 1972. It's taken us 30 years to get to that point again," said Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It's too early to say this represents a trend. I'd be curious to see what happens next year."

"Let's see some kind of track record before I start jumping up and down," said Frank Smith Jr., acting board president of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

2.8 percent of nominees

Of 278 acting Oscars awarded since 1929, only six -- 2.2 percent -- were won by blacks.

In three of the last four years, no blacks were nominated in the four acting categories. Three years ago, when no black actors were nominated, awards presenter Chris Rock joked that the ceremony looked like the "million white-man march."

Blacks make up 13 percent of the population but have earned just 2.8 percent of Oscar acting nominations, among them the three 1972 contenders, Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield for "Sounder" and Diana Ross for "Lady Sings the Blues." All three lost.

Many blacks in Hollywood say there has been incremental progress toward choicer roles. In the early years of film, blacks generally were relegated to caricatured comic parts. Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, while continuing to play off racial stereotypes, at least put more black actors to work.

In the 1980s and 1990s, black actors such as Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Samuel L. Jackson and Rock developed box-office clout in mainstream films. Some, such as Washington and Smith, have traded on their commercial success to get more serious roles.

Smith said "Ali," a film about a "black Muslim, probably the most controversial figure in black American history," probably would not have been made if he had not signed on with Sony for "Men in Black 2," this summer's sequel to Smith's alien-comedy smash.

"I think the roles are opening up slightly," said Smith, a first-time Oscar nominee known mainly for comedy and action romps. "I believe a lot of it has to do with box office. ... For black actors and all minority actors, I think box-office success is going to drive the ability and willingness of Hollywood to make, not necessarily the smaller, but the more intellectually based pictures with better roles for minorities."