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This week’s Cult Mentality podcast centres on the #oscarssowhite debate. The debate arose in response to the Academy Awards’ snub of actors and filmmakers of colour year after year. The hashtag aims to highlight the inequity of Oscar nominations, as well as promote viewers to boycott this year’s Academy Awards along with prominent black celebrities, like Jada Pinkett-Smith and Spike Lee.

The work of people of colour has been largely ignored and under-appreciated in Hollywood and that is due to an ongoing systemic racism in the film industry. But this conversation is concerned specifically with the actual act of boycotting. Is boycotting the Oscars, as a viewer, a productive way to make a change in the industry? Or does it totally miss the problem at the heart of all this?

Arts and Entertainment contributors Tanveer Ahmed and Selin Altuntur, sat down with editor April Barrett to discuss both sides of the debate.

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