A HOLLYWOOD film once posed the question: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Well, now we have a contemporary answer to that 1967 inquiry. It is sure as sunshine not a black winner of a best actor Oscar in 2016.

Ladies and gentlemen, Academy members, the nominees for this year’s awards include: Leonardo DiCaprio, white; Michael Fassbender, white; Eddie Redmayne, white; Jennifer Lawrence, white; Cate Blanchett, white; Christian Bale, white; Mark Ruffalo, white; Rooney Mara, white; Kate Winslet, white; Jennifer Jason Leigh … you get the idea. Twenty places on the best actor nomination list and every one went to a white actor.

If this was a corny Hollywood movie it is about now that newspaper front pages would start to spin out of the screen with headlines such as "Outrage at Oscars", "Hollywood in the dock", and "Headless Oscar statue in topless bar protest" (with apologies to Vincent A Musetto, the late, great, original writer of that classic New York Post headline).

As it is, it has been left to actors and filmmakers, black and white, to give a measured, dignified response in any way they feel able. So Jada Pinkett-Smith says she will be boycotting the ceremony, stating “we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledg3ment or respect of any group”. George Clooney reckons the industry needs to “get better at this”, while Mark Ruffalo, a nominee, sympathises with a boycott. Oscar-winning director Michael Moore is for staying away, while Spike Lee, having said he would not be attending the event, says it is up to others what they do.

And so it comes to pass that one of the most liberal communities in America is left tying itself in knots while the rest of the world looks on and wonders why, almost half a century after Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy did their thing, and eight years after the country elected its first black president, the row over race and Hollywood has erupted again. And not just race. The American Civil Liberties Union is already demanding investigations into the number of films – just four per cent – directed by women.

Why is Hollywood so painfully unable to get its act together on race and gender? Why is a global, multi-billion dollar business allowed to persist with such a closed-door policy in the modern age? And what is the betting that Chris Rock, the African-American host of the Oscars on February 28, will have something to say on the matter? One has to feel slightly sorry for Rock, being expected to nail centuries of prejudice to the wall with a few snappy one-liners but, if anyone can, he can.

When it comes to race, it is impossible to separate Hollywood’s problems from the rest of America’s. Cultural industries can lead the way in society, and there is no doubt that at times showbusiness has done just that, with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Star Trek’s interracial kiss among examples of Hollywood challenging prejudices. Admittedly, there have been more Gone with the Wind instances than Selmas (the Martin Luther King biopic which failed to land its black director or star Oscar nominations, though it did win best song), but there have been moments when Tinseltown has done the right thing.

More often than not, however, it is society that sets the pace of change, not culture. Looking at America in 2016 it is sometimes possible to feel as though the nation is embarked on a grisly dance of one step forward, two back, on race. It is not just the news reports of police violence against black citizens. It is the scandal being played out in the mainly African-American city of Flint, Michigan, where the water supply has been contaminated by lead, thousands of children may have been seriously harmed and the disaster has been called the new Katrina. Yet still wrangling continues over how best to respond. "If I were a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kid's health could be at risk," said President Obama when he visited Detroit this week.

Faced with mounting emergencies such as Flint, what is happening at the Oscars seems like a hill of beans, but it is important in highlighting the continuing racial divide in America. Flint does not make global headlines, alas, but talk of Oscar boycotts does. If such talk can give Hollywood a much-needed kick in the backside, then so much the better.

The blame for how the Oscars ended up with all-white best actor shortlists for the second year in a row can be laid at several doors. First, the Academy members who choose the winners have a bad case of PMS: pale, male and stale. The Los Angeles Times, which investigated the membership in 2012, found that 14 per cent were under 50, 94 per cent were white, and 77 per cent were men. The Academy president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, said this week she was “heartbroken and frustrated” at the Oscars row, and is taking steps to change the make-up of the membership.

It is not just the Academy, important though it is in attracting attention, that is to blame. It is the business itself. Black directors struggle to get films made. Black actors battle against a wall of assumptions as to the roles they should play. Black writers, too, find the subjects they want to write about are too often not on the studio’s books. It was Spike Lee who said it was easier to be president of the US as a black person than be head of a studio. He met African-Americans when he visited studios to make pitches, but they were only there to show him to a room where the white, decision-making, executives were sitting. Until the make-up of the “room” is changed, the make-up of the Academy will be a side issue. And while it is by no means guaranteed that more women and minorities in positions of power will lead to greater diversity, or great pictures, it has to be worth a try.

For it is a basic rule of business that the customer comes first, that a firm serves their needs and desires or it goes out of business. Hollywood has generally been adept at this, but the Oscars row shows it is starting to lose the plot, to lag behind modern sensibilities and audiences. Cinema patrons want the same old escapism, of course they do, but they also want to see their own lives reflected on screen. America is not pale, male and stale, so why should so many of the movies Hollywood makes be that way?

Ultimately, and regardless of how the boycott plays out from here, it is up to audiences to lead the way, to vote with their wallet as to what they want to see. And change is going to come. When a movie such as Straight Outta Compton, about the LA rap scene, can make more than $200 million worldwide, you can almost hear the tectonic plates shifting. While its actors were not nominated either, its (white) writers were. Money talks; always has. And Hollywood needs to start listening.