Black history is much broader than slavery- that’s why people find it offensive. Rather than getting to play a range of historical characters, it’s pigeonholing. Again, the obsession with historical films means that women also get sidelined (unless you’re playing a monarch of course).
Most of the stories we have, because of historical oppression, are not about black people. By all means, be upset about this. I am. Be upset about all the stories lost. There must be thousands upon thousands of tragic and inspiring tales that were simply never written down or preserved. It's awful to contemplate. It's an invisible Library of Alexandria, like so much of human experience.
As tragic as it is, it means that, to filmmakers, these stories simply do not exist. As reality changes and more diverse stories enter recorded history, art will reflect this more. It makes very little sense to condemn modern filmmakers for the fact that almost all the true stories they may want to tell have this limitation.
This critique falls into the same trap that a lot of modern policy ideas do: they condemn the symptom and not the disease. They attack natural and unoffensive things
downstream of the actual offensive thing. It's not reasonable to task filmmakers with counterweighting history with their art.
To some extent it’s obvious that historical films would regularly get nominated, because you have something real you can compare to, like Meryl Streep winning the Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher. However, do we want films that are always looking back rather than forwards?
That last sentence sounds nice, but I'm not sure what it actually
means, in practice. More science fiction?
Anyway, I reject the premise (if this is indeed what you're saying) that there's a mutual exclusivity to the two. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and it's only with time that broader lessons become clear. There is nothing bad or retrograde about telling stories from history. Progress is not a race down a straight line, it's a marathon without a map that requires constant reevaluation and course correction.