“You’re Damn Right Hollywood Is Racist”: Chris Rock Went All In On Race In His Oscars Monologue

The 88th Academy Awards have just kicked off in LA this afternoon and, as expected, #OscarsSoWhite is dominating a whole lot of the spotlight. After months of debate about the fact there are no people of colour nominated for any of the major acting awards, resulting in talks of boycott and some actual reform in the way of new diversity initiatives, the day has come. And host Chris Rock is not letting anyone forget about the larger issues at hand.

Though many called for him to quit in protest, Rock’s dedicated his opening monologue almost entirely to the issue of racism and diversity. Stepping out on stage in a white tux, he said “I’m here at the Academy Awards, otherwise known as the White People’s Choice Awards”. It only got better from there.

“Why are we protesting now? Why this Oscars?” he said, addressing questions raised by many (white people) over the past couple of months. “It’s the 88th Academy Awards, which means this whole ‘no black nominees’ thing has happened at least 71 other times. You got to figure it happened in the ’50s, in the ’60s — one of those years Sidney [Poitier] didn’t put out a movie — and black people did not protest. Why? Because we had real things to protest at the time. We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won Best Cinematographer. When your grandmother’s swinging from a tree, it’s really hard to care about Best Documentary Foreign Short.”

This wider look at race relations then continued as he examined the nature of “Hollywood racism” and brought the continuing problem of police violence against African Americans into the conversation: “This year things are going to be a little different,” he said. “In the ‘In Memoriam’ package, it’s just gonna be black people that were shot by the cops on their way to the movies.”

“The real question everyone wants to know in the world is ‘Is Hollywood racist?’. Y’know, you have to look at that in a certain way … Is it burning cross racist? Is it fetch me some lemonade racist? It’s a different type of racist. One night I was at a fundraiser for President Obama — me and all of Hollywood and there were about four black people there me. Let’s see, there was Quincy Jones, Russell Simmons, Questlove, the usual suspects. And at some point you get to take a picture with the president. As they’re setting up the picture you get a little moment with the president and I say, ‘you see all these actors and writers and producers, they don’t hire black people, and they’re the nicest people there are’.

“Is hollywood racist? You’re damn right Hollywood’s racist. You’ve grown accustomed to it. Hollywood is sorority racist. It’s like ‘we like you Rhonda, but you’re not a kappa’.”

The latter half of the monologue then looked at the issue of diversity more generally as he jokingly suggested people of colour should be treated the same as women:

“If you want black nominees every year, you need to just have black categories,” he said. “You already do it with men and women. Think about it: there’s no reason for there to be a man and a woman category in acting. It’s not track and field. You don’t need to seperate them. Robert DeNiro’s never said ‘I better slow this acting down so Meryl Streep can catch up’.

“We want opportunity. We want the black actors to get the same opportunities. That’s it.”

The consensus so far has been that Rock killed it; he addressed the issues head-on and used the platform well. But the most important verdict has no doubt come from Oprah Winfrey. After trending on social media all morning after Whoopi Goldberg was embarrassingly misidentified as her on the red carpet, she’s given him two encouraging thumbs up.

@chrisrock???? now you Breathe!

— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) February 29, 2016

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You can watch the rest of the ceremony live on 9Now.