The Oscars Awarded Moonlight Best Picture, Confirming What We All Knew

Moonlight won the award for Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards.

Damola Durosomo
February 27, 2017

Last night's Academy Awards show was by far the best in recent memory.

Mahershala Ali and Viola Davis won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively—making 2017 the first time that two black actors have won in both categories.  Ali is the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar, and Davis is now the first black woman to have won an Emmy, Tony and Oscar for acting.

Perhaps the biggest moment of the night was Moonlight winning for Best Picture. For most of us, it was the obvious choice, but given how much white folks seem to love La La Land, it seemed highly possible that Moonlight might face an upset at its expense.

We were all preparing our op-eds and angry tweets as it was wrongly announced that La La Land had won. But to everyone's delight, it was all just a Steve Harvey-inspired mix-up. The Academy actually picked the right movie, Moonlight won, and we should all relish in this victory. It was about damn time.

Moonlight is a film for the ages—a triumph for black cinema, and we're glad that the Academy was finally on the same page as the rest of us in recognizing that. More of this please.

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