The great Oscars blackout

When Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won the best-actor Oscar categories and Sidney Poitier was honoured with a lifetime achievement award in 2002, the night was a watershed for black actors in Hollywood.

Since then the debate about Hollywood diversity among the black community has continued to ebb and flow, but one fact remains constant: nearly all black actors are still only being recognised by the Academy Awards for playing specifically black characters in film.

Four movies from 2013 have served to animate that conversation during Hollywood's awards season: 12 Years A Slave, Lee Daniels's The Butler, Fruitvale Station and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Only the first, Steve McQueen's historical drama, made it to the Oscars.

This year three black actors will be vying for Oscars at Sunday's ceremony, and if 12 Years a Slave wins best picture it will be the first film by a black director to do so.

But as black films and actors are being celebrated by Hollywood, there is no clear indication that the industry has turned the corner on increasing roles not based on race.

"When roles in otherwise mainstream movies go to black actors that aren't necessarily written for (them). I think that's a point when there will have been some profile change," said Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California and an expert on black cinema and culture. "We are not there yet."

Seven of the nine best picture nominees for an Oscar this year, including large casts in American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street, do not have any black actors in lead or support roles.

The two films that do, Captain Phillips and 12 Years a Slave, have landed acting nods for stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is up for best actor, and Lupita Nyong'o and Barkhad Abdi in the supporting categories.

British actor Ejiofor and Kenyan-Mexican actress Nyong'o both play slaves in McQueen's pre-civil war drama, while Somali-American newcomer Abdi, in his first acting role, portrays a Somali pirate who seizes command of a cargo ship.

Washington managed to play an alcoholic pilot in Flight, a role for which he was nominated for best actor in 2013. But that was one of the rare exceptions.

"Why couldn't there be an African-American starring in the role that Joaquin Phoenix plays (in Her)?" said Boyd. "When you see that, then there's a change."

Nearly 75 years ago Hattie McDaniel broke the barrier by winning for her supporting performance as Mammy in 1939's Gone With the Wind. Twenty-four years later, Poitier became the first black actor to win best actor for 1963's Lilies of the Field.

It took another 38 years for Berry to become the first black best-actress winner for her role as an impoverished mother inMonster's Ball.