Hollywood Isn’t a Civil Rights Trophy : The Oscar should be bestowed on the most qualified people in film, regardless of race.

Something happened to the civil rights movement this year and it’s not the antiaffirmative action caucus that’s to blame. It’s the civil rights agenda itself. First it was the decision to defend crack dealers whose sentences were allegedly too harsh. Then it was the three-strikes felons who were allegedly too black. Now, it’s the Academy Awards, which are allegedly too white.

The new civil rights causes are enough to make even the most dedicated activist ask whether the movement isn’t on the verge of tripping over its own absurdity. Of these causes, however, it is the attack on Hollywood--until now, the civil rights movement’s greatest institutional ally--that is the most unnerving.

Those old enough can remember what pioneers the Motion Picture Academy and the film industry have actually been in the area of civil rights. Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Academy Award (“Gone With the Wind”) in 1939. The postwar generation grew up on films attacking racism like “The Boy With Green Hair” (1948), “Home of the Brave” (1949) and “Pinky” (1949). Ethel Waters received an Academy Award nomination for her role in the latter. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Hollywood again led with films like “The Defiant Ones” (1958) and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” (1967), whose themes were antiracist and whose star, Sidney Poitier, was given an Oscar in 1963.

Nor did Hollywood stop with the plea for tolerance and integration. When it came to consciousness-raising, black pride and even black nationalism, Hollywood was ready to provide inspiring footage to help the cause. “Roots,” an epic produced by whites and viewed by more Americans than any previous show, probably did more to restore historic memory to America’s communities--black and white--than any other single factor. In “Malcolm X,” black director Spike Lee was given an opportunity to make a $40-million, three-hour biographical movie of the life of a radical black leader. No white director with Lee’s meager box office record would have been accorded a similar privilege.

The ‘90s have witnessed an explosion of black talent on the screen. Black superstars are earning millions of dollars per picture. A better indicator yet: Even lackluster products by blacks (“Poetic Justice,” “Higher Learning,” “Panther”) have been made and widely distributed. This disputes the argument that African Americans are an oppressed minority within the entertainment ranks.

The Academy Awards program, the target of the civil rights attack, this year again is produced and hosted by African Americans Quincy Jones and Whoopi Goldberg.

Yet, the African American community, led by Jesse Jackson, has chosen to ignore its success and trumpet instead its alleged failure: There is only one nomination of an African American for this year’s accolades. So what? Robert DeNiro made two pictures this year and didn’t get nominated. Nor did Al Pacino. Nor did Martin Scorcese. Is this evidence of prejudice against Italian Americans?

Maybe next year there will be 10 African Americans nominated. But for now, the leadership of the black community doesn’t care and is not listening to the signals that indicate the broad acceptance of black artists in the popular culture as a whole. Blacks have created their own Academy Awards, reproducing the segregated culture many have worked so hard to leave behind. It’s just part of a disturbing movement on the part of successful African Americans to separate themselves from the American community at large. It is almost as though the black community is reluctant to give up the stigmata of oppression that constitute its own special marks of virtue.

Perhaps this is, after all, the real meaning of the year’s most spectacular (and problematic) civil rights demonstration: the “Million Man March.” The march supposedly registered black America’s liberation from what white people think. Jesse Jackson’s whining over the Academy Awards suggests that the liberation is incomplete. If black Americans don’t give a damn what other racial and ethnic groups think, then why complain about the Academy Awards? Be content with your own.

Perhaps the real message is for the rest of us: Shrug off the whining and get on with the task of recognizing excellence and achievement wherever it exists, without regard to race, color or creed.