Zoe Saldana’s Oscar Win Was a First for Afro-Latinas
By Catherine Jones
This year, Zoe Saldaña took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Emilia Pérez, becoming the first actor of Dominican descent to do so. Her win should have been an unfiltered celebration, a long-overdue moment of recognition. Instead, it was met with controversy.
Saldaña’s acceptance speech was overshadowed by backlash from Mexican audiences, who criticized the film’s portrayal of their country. “I’m very, very sorry that many Mexicans felt offended,” she said in the Oscars press room. “That was never our intention.”
The tension surrounding her win speaks to a deeper, ongoing issue in Hollywood. It’s one where actors of color are often celebrated within a narrow, predetermined space while the industry drags its feet on true systemic change.
“Victory for Saldana is complex. It is celebratory for minority actors vying for inclusion, but simultaneously it is for a film mired in ethnic and cultural controversy,” UK-based Author Ben Arogundade explains. “So much so that Saldana herself felt the need to apologise to Mexicans for being disrespected in the film’s production.”
Arogundade adds, “Saldaña is only the second Afro-Latina ever to win an Oscar, and the eleventh Black woman to win Best Supporting Actress. Although her victory is celebratory, it also reveals the extent to which Black and Latina actresses are restricted to this award, but seldom the top prize of Best Actress. To date, only one black woman has ever won it (Halle Berry), and no Latinas at all, in almost a century.”
New Book That Shows Why Saldaña’s Win is Not Enough
In his newly released book “Hollywood Blackout,” Arogundade dissects racism in the film industry and how Hollywood’s diversity problem is still far from solved. Latin Heat caught up with the author, who is now on a press tour to promote his book in the United States, to ask him about his book and his findings. As it turns out, the Oscars are truly a mirror of Hollywood’s ongoing struggles with diversity.
Latin Heat: In your research, what was the most shocking discovery you made about Latino representation in Hollywood?
Ben Arogundade: The way that they were negatively represented on screen in early Hollywood — as bandits, philanderers and ‘greasers’ — stereotypes that would take root for decades, and still linger within film culture today.
LH: How do Latino experiences compare to those of Black actors?
BA: Very similar. All minorities, in film terms, were traditionally considered ‘second class’. Blacks and Latinos have suffered many of the same humiliations and stereotypes at the hands of a dominating white culture that sees them as ‘less than’. Just as Black actress Hattie McDaniel was corralled into being a career maid within Hollywood film, Rita Moreno suffered the same fate. Both women, despite winning Oscars, were not permitted to escape their typecasting.
LH: Many people are familiar with the lack of Black winners at the Oscars, but Latino actors are often overlooked in these conversations. Why do you think their exclusion has been less widely discussed?
BA: Before this year’s Academy Awards, Black actors had won Oscars on 23 occasions, while Latinos had won just four times. Four times! African Americans have fared better overall because they have lobbied and campaigned the hardest over time. From the early 1900s civil rights leaders and Black newspapers consistently demonstrated against Hollywood’s racism. Latinos by comparison have been less active and less vocal over the timeline. The Latino equivalent of Spike Lee — shouting for equality, has been missing. Worst of all though, Native Americans and South Asians, the least active, have won almost nothing as actors at the Oscars. So, the intensity and duration of agitation seems to correlate with the amount of Oscars won.
LH: Hollywood often celebrates itself as being diverse and progressive. Based on your research, do you think there has been real progress, or is the industry still struggling with the same systemic issues?
BA: Yes and no. Undoubtedly there has been progress. The Academy started in 1927 with 33 white men and three women, who were mostly Americans. Latinos and blacks were barred from major roles, and their parts played by white actors. Today, minorities feature in major productions. The Academy has 11,000 members from over 70 countries, 20 per cent of whom are from under-represented backgrounds, and a third of whom are women. This is changing the types of films nominated, and the actors within them. This year, two non-English-language films made the Best Picture list, and gay and trans artists featured amongst the acting nominations. This has never happened before. But on the flip side, progress has been patchy. Emilia Perez was criticised for its old, stereotypical view of Latinos, and for excluding Mexicans from a production that appropriated their culture. Zoe Saldana was rightly celebrated as the second Afro-Latina to win Best Supporting Actress — but minorities have been relegated to only winning in this category, and have been shut out of the top prize of Best Actress, where Blacks have won once and Latinos not at all, after almost a century.
LH: If you could change one thing about the way the Oscars recognise talent, particularly for Black and Latino actors, what would it be?
BA: The Academy, particularly under its former leader, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, has done a good job in diversifying the roster of film professionals who vote for the Oscars, and this revision continues. So, if I could change anything now, it would probably not be there, but at the other end of the chain — when writers, directors, producers and casting agents are formulating projects. If these people can think in more expansive ways when casting actors, more Blacks, Latinos and others would feature in qualitative, major roles that might then get nominated, and then hopefully onto the podium on Oscars’ night. The streamers are doing a better job of this at the moment. But changing ingrained stereotypes within the white Hollywood psyche is not easy.
LH: What impact do you think your book will have on the industry?
BA: None, probably — although I am open to being surprised. I think its influence is more likely to be felt by the diverse people outside Hollywood, or who are trying to get in, who read it and learn something about the way things work, and why. ‘Hollywood Blackout’ might inform some strategy or enlightening moment for them. History books like mine are more important than ever right now, with people in America opposing diversity while forgetting the historical fact that diversity is what built America. It’s what made America great.
About the Writer: Catherine Jones is the Editor-At-Large for Nuestro Stories. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post Magazine, USA Weekend, Huck, People, and dozens of other media publications. She’s also written about the Latino community for television segments Today show and NY1 Noticias.