In 2002, Halle Berry became the first African-American actress to win an Academy award for Best Actress but since then all Best Actress winners been white.
"This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women that stand beside me – Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett and it’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened," Berry said in her moving acceptance speech in 2002.
But the "door" that "has been opened" that Berry spoke of has a long way to go. All Best Actress winners since her 2002 win have been white.
And no winner in any acting category during the last ten years has been Latino, Asian American, or Native American, according to a new study titled "Not Quite a Breakthrough: The Oscars and Actors of Color, 2002-2012," that was sponsored by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, UC Berkeley School of Law and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.