The 89th Academy Award has been announced two days ago. The best picture is given to Moonlight. Someone said the Academy chose Moonlight because of the former blame they received on racism for last year’s lack of nonwhite nominees. I think both Moonlight and LA LA LAND are great films, but it is hard to deny that the Academy committees did consider about the factor of the political correctness when making the decision.
Such arguments about political correctness in many award ceremonies will never end. Most of the awards committees are trying best to achieve the balance or just calm down the press. Either way is not a clear solution or there is potentially no solution for such problem because the bigger problem of racism has been solved yet.
Heraclitus said “the only thing constant is change.” People will not stop to argue about this and I believe the committees will not stop of changing their standard either. When we are trying to understand the result of each award, we all naturally have our own biases. I don’t think I need to worry about my own biases, but I do keep remind myself to see the other way that I haven’t seen before – the way may be opposite to my own but still make sense to others.
As the award committees keep fixing, correcting and modifying their standards, I think their potential bias is changing into a neutral “unbiased” attitude in the long term. However, if such awards always take the middle point of the two or multi-angular, the awards themselves may lose it popularity or uniqueness. Therefore, I think the most valuable thing in such arguments is the argument itself and the communication processes which pushes people to a better understanding of the problem.
Whiteness in USAmerican Culture 
I think it’s important to note that decisions about which film deserves the award of “Best Film” are always subjective. Even if we have concrete, straightforward criteria to judge them (which we don’t really), individual aspects of individual films might resonate differently with different voters. As you mention, both films are by all accounts excellent films. So even if the Academy did, as you suggest, account for its past racial biases and previous criticisms of the predominant whiteness of the awards ceremony, we might meaningfully ask if that’s a bad thing. A strong case could be made for either film (and many others) depending on what criteria we use to assess them or what our individual assessments are–is it really a problem is politics and representation are also criteria that we use to assess such films? I think your post gives us a lot to think about with regards to these questions.
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