(January 26, 2007) — Last week, Hollywood junkies across the nation sat down with a bowl of popcorn and a box of Bonbons to watch the Golden Globes. Viewers are always unprepared for the shock that follows when their favorite star doesn’t win for a role as a dashing pirate or a charming prince. They were probably even more shocked this year when, after the show, a certain star’s father and manager threw out the race card by commenting that his daughter didn’t win an award for Best Actress because of her African American heritage. Yes, according to Beyonce’s daddy, the good ol’ boy system is as alive today as it was in the ‘60s. In a recent article published by Atlanta Gossip , Matthew Knowles was quoted as saying, “Today is MLK’s birthday and it saddens me to say that things have not changed for blacks. Working class blacks and blacks in Hollywood are still being discriminated against. We still have a long way to go.” A sad story, until your remember that Forest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Prince and the movie Dreamgirls (which features an all black cast) also all won Golden Globe awards this year. In fact, three out of the top five most prestigious awards were given to African Americans. What makes it all the more ironic is the fact that out of all the actors that won awards for Dreamgirls, Beyonce was the only one who is a mix of black and white and also wore a silky weave of someone else’s hair (which wasn’t fooling anyone). The mere association of such an accusation with Martin Luther King is downright offensive, because if anything is giving a disadvantage to blacks in the entertainment industry, it’s comments like this. Every once in awhile, an actor or musician will attribute their lack of success to race rather than their lack of talent, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say that I’m more than a little disgusted. Entertainment isn’t the only area where artists feel it’s necessary to make race an issue when it clearly isn’t. Rapper and producer Kanye West once declared, “[President] Bush doesn’t care about black people,” in reference to the government’s tragically delayed and unsatisfactory response to Hurricane Katrina. This is the same man who jumped up on stage when he didn’t win the MTV European Music Awards for Best Video and commenced a curse-filled tirade against the show as the award was being presented to winners Justice and Simian’s video for “We Are Your Friends.” This February is Black History Month, and blacks entertainers have certainly come a long way since days of the blackface minstrel shows of the Civil War. While we need to recognize that discrimination and racism are a terrible reality faced by blacks in many facets of American life, I think we can all admit that entertainment and music industry, which are dominated by talented black stars, are not included in these areas.