Spike Lee’s Instagram Explanation About Boycotting OscarsSoWhite: “Mean No Disrespect To My Friends, Host Chris Rock and Producer Reggie Hudlin, President [Cheryl Boone] Isaacs And The Academy. But, How Is It Possible For The 2nd Consecutive Year All 20 Contenders Under The Actor Category Are White? And Let’s Not Even Get Into The Other Branches. 40 White Actors In 2 Years And No Flava At All. We Can’t Act?! WTF!!”

HE Response: Idris Elba or even Abraham Attah should/could have been nominated for Beasts of No Nation — no question. And I wouldn’t have argued if Creed‘s Michael B. Jordan had been Best Actor nominated, no matter how unlikely that would have been given the competition in that category. But what black actor besides Elba was really and truly given the shaft this year? And what was the big fuckover last year? David Oyelowo as MLK? A strong, steady performance, okay, but I honestly didn’t feel that knocked out.

And on the Best Picture front, Academy voters had five slots to fill in. Is it really that much of a surprise that Creed and Straight Outta Compton didn’t occupy those five in sufficient numbers? If there had been had ten choices, they would have ranked seventh or eighth on most ballots — be honest.