Oscars’ New Diversity Rules Fail to Address Real Inclusion, Says USC’s Stacy Smith

Dr. Stacy Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said she “started laughing” when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences shared their standards for representation and inclusion for Oscars eligibility in 2020, arguing that by their new standards, “90 to 95%” of films already passed the test.

“That’s not criteria. It’s calling your buddies and saying, ‘What do you think should work?’ That’s not inclusion, and that isn’t the work of inclusion,” Smith told TheWrap founder and CEO Sharon Waxman at Friday’s launch of TheWrap’s Cannes Conversations in partnership with Brand Innovators. “You can’t expect that to succeed at all when everybody’s already met the criteria.”

Smith further lamented that diversity initiatives across the board haven’t “actually changed hiring practices.”

“I don’t know if any of the experts in the United States have actually been consulted on how to increase inclusion,” she said. “Everybody has programs. Everybody does what they think will work,” Smith said.

Watch the full panel discussion for “How Data-Driven Inclusion is Winning Over Audiences” below:

Although the Academy’s criteria were based on the British Film Institute (BFI), Smith further explained that without the accompanying government funding in the U.K., there won’t be true inclusion.

“In the U.K., they created standards for getting resources for film, like their tax incentives. Those standards have inclusion criteria. The only way to increase inclusion is to have criteria in hiring,” Smith affirmed. Otherwise, she said, the tendency is for decision-makers to operate on a mindset of: “You’re my buddy. I’m going to give you the money to make whatever you want to do next.”

Smith continued: “Until you do that, and you seriously stick or adhere to that criteria, it’s not going to happen. And that’s why we don’t see big changes in the U.S. [The U.K.] tied it to government funding, and it worked. We don’t have government funding.”

Waxman then asked Smith to clarify whether or not what the Academy has declared as its goal is actually progress.

“No, absolutely not,” Smith said. “It’s just like implicit bias. Everybody tells you these problems are due to implicit bias … Most of the problems in Hollywood are explicit biases.”

She added, “These are really conscious ways in which, as soon as you say a certain person can’t open a film by gender or race, ethnicity, it’s over. As soon as you say people won’t watch these types of love stories between individuals from the LGBTQ+ community — these are all conscious biases.”

Smith reiterated that implicit bias training in the workplace “doesn’t work” in most cases. “Criteria works, and criteria that ensures that all talent is evaluated in the same way, so that true talent can thrive. That’s the only way that you’ll get inclusion. But that’s not what the studios or even the academy is doing. Not to be overly pessimistic, I just don’t see change coming in soon.”

The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which was founded in 2017 amid the #MeToo movement, is a global think tank investigating inequality for women and other underrepresented minorities in Hollywood. Their most recent study, examining 1,800 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2024, was issued in February.

Watch Smith’s full conversation with Waxman for TheWrap Cannes Conversations series above.

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