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'Frustrated' Oscars chief promises 'dramatic steps'

Kim Willis
USA TODAY
Actor John Krasinski and Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs applaud the nominees while announcing the Oscar field at Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan. 14, 2016.

Four days after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced an all-white list of actors for Oscar nominations, the group's president has said she's "heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion."

In a statement released Monday night, Cheryl Boone Isaacs outlined the Academy's plan to take "dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership."

"I’d like to acknowledge the wonderful work of this year’s nominees," she wrote. "While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership.  In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond."

Oscars: Acting races are an all-white field

"As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. But the change is not coming as fast as we would like.  We need to do more, and better and more quickly.

"This isn’t unprecedented for the Academy. In the ‘60s and ‘70s it was about recruiting younger members to stay vital and relevant. In 2016, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together."

Filmmaker Spike Lee hoists his honorary Oscar at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Governors Awards on Nov. 14, 2015, in Hollywood.

Earlier in the day, Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith announced on social media that they would boycott the Feb. 28 ceremony.

"#OscarsSoWhite ... again," the director Lee wrote on Instagram. "People, the truth is we ain’t in those rooms, and until minorities are, the Oscar nominees will remain lilly white."

The actress' husband Will Smith received a Golden Globes nomination for his role as forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu in Concussion, but failed to receive an acting nomination for the Oscars. Idris Elba was widely expected to be nominated for his part as an African warlord in Beasts of No Nation, but he was also overlooked.

"Maybe it is time we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities, into our programs, and we make programs for ourselves that acknowledge us in ways that we see fit, that are just as good as the so-called mainstream," Jada Pinkett Smith said in a video posted on Facebook that has had more than 7 million views.

"We are a dignified people and we are powerful — let’s not forget it.”

Spike Lee, Jada Pinkett Smith to boycott this year's Oscars

The diversity controversy initially erupted in 2015, when no actors of color were included in the 20 nominations for actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actress.

This year's Oscar host, Chris Rock, has mocked the nominations on Twitter, tweeting out that the Oscars are "the White BET Awards."

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