With the return of the Golden Globes to television this week, after taking last year off amid controversy and scandal around the award show’s voting body, the hosts of “The View” were pleased to see the apparent uptick in diversity of the winners. But host Sunny Hostin still wondered why it was ever an issue — to which Whoopi Goldberg had one answer: colonization.
As part of the day’s Hot Topics discussion, the women eventually ended up on Tuesday night’s awards, applauding host Jerrod Carmichael for his blunt honesty during his opening monologue. “I won’t say they were racist, but they didn’t have a single black member since George Floyd died,” Carmichael said of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in his opening minutes, joking that that makes him “un-fireable.”
“I heard they got six new black members, congrats to them, whatever,” he added. “But it’s not why I’m here. I look out into this room and I see a lot of talented people, like people that I admire, people that I would like to be like, and people that I’m jealous of, and people that are actually really incredible artists. And regardless of whatever the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s past may be, this is an evening where we get to celebrate.”
So Sunny Hostin posed a question to Whoopi, considering the moderator is the most familiar with awards shows and the acting industry, asking “Why was there no diversity with the foreign press?”
“Like, I understand our history here in the United States and our history of 400 years of bondage and slavery, and continuing racial, structural inequities. But, they’re supposed to be foreign film, right?” Hostin continued. “A foreign body picking it. Why do you think there was no Black representation?”
Whoopi largely avoided getting too into the weeds on it, initially saying she doesn’t know. “I mean, it’s the world that we live in,” Whoopi added. “And now they seem to have, you know, woken up and rectified it and it’s — it just happened.”
At that, host Joy Behar chimed in, telling Sunny that she’s looking at the situation with the expectation that “people should be woke,” but in reality, they aren’t. Host Sara Haines added that years of historical precedent likely led to the lack of diversity, with Hostin baffled by how “the colonization of the world” at large could play in.
“Well yeah, and you know why they colonized the world, and how they colonized the world, and who was in all those colonies?” Whoopi added. “That’s how it happened.”