Here’s a sketch of what we found: Overall, films nominated for Best Picture have become more diverse between 1989 and 2017 — but only slightly. What’s different now is that there are specific films that move the dial forward: In Lady Bird, for example, 78% of the dialogue spoken is by women. In Get Out, 47% of the dialogue is from black people. And the range of roles a person of color or woman in a Best Picture–nominated film can play has expanded beyond those of Driving Miss Daisy, where some of the most uttered words by black people were “yessum,” “dat,” and “miz.”
“We Compared Several Years Of Oscars Best Picture Scripts To See If They Really Became More Diverse,” Lam Thuy Vo and Scott Pham, BuzzfeedNews, 3/2/18.