Black women are paying close attention to this year’s Oscars — and we all have a stake in the outcome.
The stark contrast between the portrayals of Black women in two leading Best Picture contenders, “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners,” has lit a firestorm in both private and public conversations. We celebrate the recognition of Black excellence for actors like Teyana Taylor, Wunmi Mosaku, and Chase Infiniti. But these portrayals matter far beyond who earns a golden statue.
The cultural influence of how Black women are depicted on screen shapes what people believe we deserve — and those beliefs color policy debates, funding decisions, and whose pain gets taken seriously.
Hollywood’s Long History of Harmful Tropes
Historically, the film industry’s narrative power to reward and repeat certain roles has too often reinforced harmful tropes: the Jezebel, the Angry Black Woman, the Mammy, and the Bad Mother.
These are not harmless caricatures. Like the Welfare Queen myth, they perpetuate beliefs that translate into policies that punish Black women. Policy does not exist in a vacuum. It moves when culture moves — and stalls when culture refuses change.
RELATED: Michael B. Jordan Loves Being Black. We Do Too
That is why the character of Perfidia in “One Battle After Another” is so divisive. Taylor’s electric performance brings genuine complexity to the role. But even as Perfidia rebels against societal dictates, her insatiable sexuality, domination of men, betrayal of comrades, and abandonment of her child land too neatly in the trope of the hypersexual, unfit Black mother.
The scene of Perfidia exposing her pregnant belly to machine gunfire left an indelible impression on millions about how much compassion Black mothers merit. Even if intended as parody, the caricature was so offensive that some Black women walked out before the film ended.
This harm stems from the writers, producers, and institutions that chose stereotype over substance — not the actress whose talent brought the role to life.
The Power of Seeing Black Women Fully Human
Contrast that with “Sinners.”
Wunmi Mosaku’s portrayal of Annie — a Hoodoo practitioner with deep prescience and spirituality and the moral center of the ensemble — triggered near-euphoria among Black women across the country. Our appreciation for Annie’s rich character development is matched only by the delight of seeing a dark-skinned, full-figured woman portrayed as both a community leader and someone worthy of romantic love.
The tragedy of Annie’s motherhood — losing her infant to early death — authentically explores an agony that remains devastatingly present today. In the United States, Black women lose our infants at more than twice the rate of white women.
While Annie mourns her baby girl and serves as a spiritual protector of her community, Perfidia chooses revolution over motherhood. She condemns her rebel cadre to death, imprisonment, or life on the run — including her lover and their vulnerable child.
Why Representation Shapes Policy
These are not simply competing aesthetic visions confined to a film reel.
As pregnant Black women face staggeringly high rates of maternal death, cinematic portrayals of Black mothers as irresponsible or hypersexual do more than distort culture. They help justify policy choices — like cuts to Medicaid funding that supports two-thirds of Black births.
When stories about us are narrow, punitive, and lacking nuance, they quietly frame how little our lives are valued.
Black Women Are a Powerful Film Audience
Beyond culture and policy, narrative content affects audience engagement — and the financial health of a film industry that is increasingly precarious.
Despite making up just 14% of the U.S. population, Black audiences — and Black women in particular — have an outsized influence on a film’s success or failure. We are more likely than other audiences to drive opening-weekend attendance. As digital trendsetters, we amplify films through social media and shape the word-of-mouth that determines streaming demand after theatrical release.
Wiser studios will pay closer attention to which reflections of Black women’s lives we actually want to see.
Who Controls the Stories
As president and CEO of In Our Own Voice, the nation’s only alliance of Black women’s reproductive justice organizations, I can confirm that Black women across this country do not want others speaking for or about us. We are the authorities on our own lives.
Yet six powerful institutions — Disney, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Netflix, Amazon/MGM, Sony, and Paramount/Warner Bros. — control the vast majority of U.S. film production, streaming platforms, broadcast networks, cable channels, and major franchise intellectual property.
These gatekeeper corporations, controlled by billionaires and global investment funds, determine whose stories get told — and how.
That is narrative power.
Building Narrative Power for Justice
This concentration of power is why I recently launched the Narrative Power for Justice Initiative, a project designed to strengthen the capacity of Black women to tell our own stories and influence culture, media, and policy.
When our narrative power is fragmented, harmful tropes drown out even the strongest data and policies. When it is robust, authentic storytelling rooted in lived experience shapes the public imagination and creates durable, justice-aligned change.
Teyana Taylor herself brought nuance and depth to the role of an imperfect Harlem mother fighting impossible odds in her breakout film “A Thousand and One” — a character created, not incidentally, by a Black woman writer and director.
What’s Really at Stake on Oscar Night
It matters to Black women which films win Oscars this Sunday. This high-profile cultural imprimatur validates the stories we are told and helps define what feels possible in the real world. We are watching — and we know exactly what’s at stake.
Dr Regina Davis Moss is a narrative strategist, cultural leader, and reproductive justice advocate whose research examines how stories shape public belief and influence policy. As President and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, she is building the long-term narrative power the movement needs to achieve human rights for Black women, girls and gender-expansive people.