On Jan. 7, the Oscar nominations were released to the public, and they were immediately faced with infuriated backlash. The public noticed that all of the nominations for the category of Best Director are male, even though many of the highly acclaimed movies of 2019 had been directed by women.

Some very successful female-directed movies of 2019 include “Hustlers” by Lorene Scafaria, “The Souvenir” by Joanna Hogg, “The Farewell” by Lulu Wang, “Booksmart” by Olivia Wilde and “Little Women” by Greta Gerwig. This is extremely excruciating because for years and years women have been put into the classification of not being able to do large jobs like directing, and when they do the job and do it extremely well, they aren’t even getting their work recognized the same as their male counterparts.

Furthermore, every single person nominated for an acting award which includes Leading Actor, Leading Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress is white, with no people of color being nominated. This was so surprising because many of the critically acclaimed movies of 2019 featured a main cast full of people of color, such as “Us,” “Queen and Slim,” “Blue Story” and “Harriet.” People of color have had to jump through so many hoops to get many of these opportunities in the film industry, and so many of these movies focus was to celebrate people of color while also creating an incredible film, yet they were not getting the reward that they deserved.

On Twitter, the hashtag “SoWhite” immediately started trending, as the public was outraged. Hashtags like this has happened in the past for other award shows, which demonstrates how the Oscar’s wasn’t even able to learn from previous mistakes with their nominations.

Overall, the outcome of award nominations were highly disappointing in the public eye.