“George Bush hates black people”

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With this year’s Grammys set to air on Feb. 8, and the Oscars following shortly after on Feb. 22, I can’t help but ask myself the same question I ask every year: do awards shows matter? More specifically, do these programs represent the interests of both audiences and creators?

Yes, awards shows are made to entertain and advertise the nominees various products, but do they not also exist to give people something to aspire to? If that is the case, it’s clear award shows are failing these people, and have been for several years. Despite Lupita Nyong’o winning the award for Best Supporting Actress at last year’s Oscars, she remains only the sixth black actress to win the award in history.

To me, there is something inherently problematic about valuing an institution that has existed for 87 years that acknowledges minority talents less than one percent of the time. More importantly, there is something equally troubling about labeling this award as something to aspire to. Unfortunately, people will defend this visible racial bias as something merely reflecting panelists’ personal tastes. Some believe this discrepancy doesn’t neglect minorities for personal reasons, but merely chooses the most deserving candidate that just happens to be white almost every time.

While that defence is obviously flawed, it isn’t the only area award shows fail in. Awards shows are too often completely out of touch with the current generation’s culture, racial bias or not.

In the case of the Grammys, its voting panel has been disconnected with music, particularly with hip-hop, for the last 20 years. In fact, awards for the rap genre have only existed since 1989, despite its dominance, and at the time only included a single award category for Best Rap Performance. Though years have passed, and though they have since added the best album and song categories, some of their decisions have been questionable.

The Grammys in particular seem trapped in the tastes of those who run them. For example, in 1994 when Ready to Die, Illmatic and Outkast’s debut record were released, the judges felt Tony Bennett was more deserving of album of the year. Even in 2014 the rock music categories were not dominated by upcoming artists, but by Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin. Somehow, a re-release of the latter’s music from the 70s beat out newer artists to win an award in 2014.

What makes it worse is that these decisions don’t reflect sales, something that would be vaguely justifiable. For example, in 2001 the release of The Marshall Mathers LP lost Album of the Year to Steely Dan, despite being the best-selling record of the year. This means that not only do these decisions not reflect a nominee’s influence on the current generation, they don’t even reflect what the generation was interested in buying.

This kind of issue is unsurprising, as diversity is uncommon among those in power. For instance, the L.A. Times reported that the people who select the Oscar nominees and winners are 94 percent “white,” with 77 percent of the members being male, with an average age of 62. Because of this, I have a hard time believing these prestigious award shows represent anyone who isn’t an old white guy. While I may feel differently when I’m an old white guy, that’s certainly a problem to me now.

So to answer my earlier question of whether awards shows matter or not is tricky. To me they can only matter if they are something every person in the industry can realistically aspire to win. Right now, I do not believe this is the case. Until then, I’ll continue not taking these programs seriously, because if I wanted to know what a bunch of old white guys thought about music or movies, I would just ask my relatives at Christmas.

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