SINGAPORE — The fallout over an all-white Oscars 2016 continues.

After Oscar-winning film-maker Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith both announced they would boycot the Academy Awards next month, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which votes on the Oscars, issued a lengthy statement.

In the statement, Boone Isaacs acknowledged the lack of diversity in this year’s Oscar nominations and said the organisation will be taking “dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership”.

Admitting to being “heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion”, Boone Isaacs, herself an African-American, said: “This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.”

According to a 2012 study conducted by the Los Angeles Times, 94 per cent of the Academy’s members are Caucasian and more than 70 per cent are male.

She added: “As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly.”

Her response comes amid mounting criticism after this year’s nominees across the acting categories were all white actors for the second year in a row.

This led to the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite trending online.

Sure, it’s conceivable for there to be years when there are no truly no Oscar-worthy performances by actors of colour. But in 2015, there were commercially and critically lauded films such as Creed, Straight Outta Compton and the outstanding Beasts Of No Nation.

And in a year which boasts such award-worthy performance by Idris Elba (who starred in Beasts Of No Nation), Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton), Michael B. Jordan (Creed), Benicio del Toro (Sicario) and Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina), one cannot help but be baffled and infuriated.

Director Lee, who received an honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievements as a film-maker and actor last November, announced in an Instagram post that he and his wife Tonya Lewis Lee will not attend what he described as a “lily-white Oscars”.

Separately, actress (and wife of actor Will Smith) Jada Pinkett Smith said she too would not be attending the Feb 28 star-studded ceremony, posting a video on her Facebook page where she said: “Maybe it is time that we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities ... and we make programmes for ourselves that acknowledge us in ways that we see fit, that are just as good as the so-called ‘mainstream’ ones.”

She continued: “Here’s what I do know: Begging for acknowledgement, or even asking, diminishes dignity and diminishes power; and we are a dignified people and we are powerful. And let’s not forget it.”

All three statements were made on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (Jan 18), an American federal holiday which commemorates the civil rights leader.