We See You:Why the 57th NAACP Image Awards Matter More Than Ever
The timing couldn't be more intentional. On the same day that federal DEI employees are being placed on leave, university diversity offices are shuttering across the nation, and the Trump administration is systematically dismantling every program designed to level an uneven playing field—the NAACP announced the nominations for its 57th Image Awards with a defiant message: We See You.
Not as a slogan. This is not merely a marketing strategy. But as a declaration of cultural resistance in an era actively hostile to Black existence in institutional spaces.
This year's NAACP Image Awards, airing February 28 on BET and CBS, isn't just another awards show. It's a political act. A refusal to disappear. This serves as a reminder that despite the government's tireless efforts to obliterate us from official narratives, we will persist in recognizing and celebrating our true selves, regardless of the opinions of others.
The Numbers Tell a Story of Excellence Amid Erasure
Ryan Coogler's Sinners leads all film nominees with a record-breaking 18 nominations—the most in NAACP Image Awards history, surpassing 2023's The Color Purple, which had 13. The film earned nods for Outstanding Motion Picture, Director, Ensemble Cast, and six acting nominations, including two for breakthrough performer Miles Caton. Michael B. Jordan, known for his outstanding performance as twin brothers in the film, shares the Entertainer of the Year nomination with Cynthia Erivo, Doechii, Kendrick Lamar, and Teyana Taylor.
Let that sink in. The same film that walked away from the Golden Globes with only two wins—one of which wasn't even televised—receives 18 nominations from the one institution explicitly designed to recognize Black excellence. This isn't coincidence. This is the difference between awards bodies that occasionally acknowledge Black talent when it's undeniable and an awards body that was created specifically because mainstream recognition wasn't coming.
Spike Lee's film, Highest 2 Lowest, follows with nine nominations. Bel-Air leads the television categories with seven nominations in its final season, followed by Abbott Elementary, Reasonable Doubt, and Ruth & Boaz with six each. Teyana Taylor and Kendrick Lamar lead individual nominees with six nods apiece—Taylor for her performances in One Battle After Another and Tyler Perry's Straw, plus recognition for her album Escape Room.
This year, the NAACP introduced two new categories that feel particularly pointed given the current climate: Outstanding Literary Work—Journalism, recognizing nationally distributed journalism that informs, uplifts, and authentically reflects on experiences significantly affecting the Black community; and Outstanding Editing in a Motion Picture or Television Series, expanding recognition for behind-the-scenes excellence.
One of the journalism nominees? HBCUs Reel as Trump Cuts Black-Focused Grants: This Is Our Existence by Jasper Smith. The NAACP isn't just celebrating Black culture—it's documenting the attack on it in real time.
Why This Matters Now: Context Is Everything
To understand why the 2026 Image Awards carry such weight, you need to understand what's happening outside the ceremony walls.
On January 20, 2025—his first day back in office—President Trump signed Executive Order 14151: Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing. The order directed federal agencies to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and positions; terminate all equity-related grants and contracts; and repeal executive orders from the Johnson administration that required federal contractors to take active steps to prevent discrimination.
By January 22, federal DEI employees were being placed on leave, with agencies ordered to submit plans for reduction-in-force actions by January 31. The administration directed agencies to take down all outward-facing media related to DEIA offices and cancel all upcoming DEI trainings. They were also told to ask employees if they knew of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language—a chilling invitation to report colleagues.
But the assault didn't stop at federal employees. The executive orders specifically directed federal agencies to identify private sector companies with the most egregious and discriminatory DEI programs, publicly traded corporations, and large nonprofits with plans to challenge their equity initiatives. Universities across the country began slashing positions, services, and programs. Identity-related traditions like affinity graduations were cancelled. Residential communities for students of certain backgrounds were disbanded.
The Trump administration attempted to ban language associated with diversity from Head Start grant applications—programs serving hundreds of thousands of children from low-income households, foster care, and homelessness. When a federal judge blocked this in early January 2026, it revealed the breadth of the administration's ambitions: not just to eliminate DEI in government, but to scrub the very language of inclusion from programs serving our most vulnerable children.
The NIH froze billions of dollars in research grants, evaluating them through an anti-DEI lens. Major corporations—Meta, McDonald's, and Walmart—wound down their diversity programs, capitulating to pressure from conservative activists. The EEOC, under Acting Chair Andrea R. Lucas, announced plans to intensify inquiries into corporate DEI programs, including using web-archive searches to target companies that have only changed how they've talked about DEI.
This is the climate in which the 57th NAACP Image Awards were announced.
The Black Oscars in a Time of Erasure
The NAACP Image Awards have long been dubbed the Black Oscars, but that nickname has always undersold their importance. These awards weren't created as a Black alternative to mainstream recognition—they were created because mainstream recognition was systematically withholding validation from Black excellence.
The awards were conceived by Toni Vaz during an April 1967 NAACP branch meeting in Beverly Hills. I called it the Image Awards because I wanted a better image for the people who worked in the industry, Vaz said. I wanted to put this award show together to thank the producers for giving positive roles to people of color. Activists Maggie Hathaway, Sammy Davis Jr., and Willis Edwards presented the inaugural ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 13, 1967.
Nearly 60 years later, the need hasn't diminished. In 1987, the NAACP came under fire for dropping their Best Actress category, defending the position by citing a lack of meaningful roles for Black women. In 1990, they couldn't award Best Actress for the fourth time, unable to find enough nominees. The OscarsSoWhite campaign emerged in 2015 after the Academy failed to nominate any actors of color, forcing a national conversation about systemic exclusion.
The pattern is clear: mainstream awards recognize Black excellence when it cannot be ignored, when it has generated so much acclaim that snubbing it would be embarrassing. However, the NAACP Image Awards naturally acknowledge and celebrate the entire range of Black creativity, regardless of its penetration into mainstream consciousness.
Actors like Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Taraji P. Henson have spoken about the difference between mainstream industry standards and being visually seen, expressing that Black entertainers should view the NAACP Image Awards as the highest achievement—not because it's more prestigious in industry terms, but because it comes from a community that understands what it takes to create and sustain excellence in spaces designed to exclude you.
What We See You Actually Mean
NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson chose the theme "We See You" deliberately. The NAACP Image Awards is our declaration to our community that we see you, affirming Black creativity, excellence, and humanity across every space where our stories are told, Johnson said. From film, television, and music to literature and beyond, the voices of all of our nominees tell stories that honor our past, celebrate our identity, and remind us that storytelling has the power to move culture forward.
Louis Carr, president of BET, added, "The NAACP Image Award nominations underscore what we've always known to be true—our people are the heartbeat of culture."
We See You stands in stark contrast to the erasure that American institutions are enacting at every level. When the federal government eliminates diversity offices, when universities cancel affinity graduations, when corporations scrub inclusive language from their mission statements—they are saying, "We don't see you." Your concerns don't matter. Your presence is negotiable.
The NAACP Image Awards say the opposite. We see Sinners' 18 nominations even though the Golden Globes largely ignored it. We see Teyana Taylor's six nominations across acting and music even though the industry tried to shelve her. We see Kendrick Lamar's six nominations even in an era trying to silence Black political expression. We see Abbott Elementary's six nominations even as sitcoms featuring predominantly Black casts are cancelled at alarming rates.
"We see you" is also a promise: You will not disappear. We will not forget your work. Your community will document and celebrate your excellence, regardless of whether mainstream institutions deign to notice.
The Strategic Brilliance of This Moment
Announcing these nominations now, in the current climate and with this theme, is a deeply strategic move. The NAACP isn't naive. They know that celebrating Black excellence in 2026 is a political statement. They know that affirming diversity and inclusion when the federal government is criminalizing those concepts makes them a target.
They don't care.
By proceeding with the Image Awards exactly as planned—expanding categories, celebrating journalists documenting attacks on Black institutions, nominating the artists who refused to shrink themselves to fit industry expectations—the NAACP is modeling resistance through recognition. They're showing that the appropriate response to erasure isn't capitulation or compromise. It's visibility. It's a celebration. It's insistence on being seen.
Consider the Entertainer of the Year category: Cynthia Erivo, Doechii, Kendrick Lamar, Michael B. Jordan, and Teyana Taylor. These aren't just talented performers. They're artists who have consistently centered Blackness in their work, who have refused to code-switch their artistry for mainstream palatability, and who have used their platforms to speak directly to and for Black communities.
Erivo, who starred in Wicked: For Good, has been vocal about the fact that colorblind casting is actually a form of color-conscious erasure. Doechii, known for her unapologetically Black feminine rap, defies industry norms. Lamar, whose GNX album and continued cultural commentary position him as one of the most important political voices in music. Jordan, despite facing Golden Globe snubs for his Sinners album, continues to champion Black stories as a producer and actor. Taylor retired from music due to industry undervaluation and returned on her own terms.
This list is the lineup the NAACP chose to highlight. This lineup may not be the most appealing to mainstream audiences, but it is the most fundamental to Black culture.
Why This Competition Isn't Just About Awards
The coordinated attack on DEI isn't really about diversity programs. It's about dismantling the infrastructure that documents discrimination and advocates for equity. When you eliminate chief diversity officers, you eliminate the people whose job is to notice patterns of exclusion. When you defund research on health disparities, you eliminate the data proving they exist. When you ban affinity spaces in universities, you eliminate the communities where students of color develop political consciousness and organize for change.
The goal is to make discrimination invisible again, to remove the language and frameworks for identifying it, and to punish anyone who tries to name it. The strategy relies on making people believe that talking about race is more harmful than racism itself, that creating spaces for historically excluded groups is discrimination against the majority, and that merit and diversity are opposites rather than complements.
This is why the NAACP Image Awards matter so much right now. Awards shows document what a culture values. They create historical records of who was recognized, when, and for what. When the Oscars snub Black films, when the Grammys overlook Black albums, when the Emmys ignore Black television—those omissions tell future generations that those works weren't significant.
But when the NAACP Image Awards say Sinners deserves 18 nominations, when they celebrate journalism documenting attacks on HBCUs, when they honor editors and behind-the-scenes workers alongside stars—they're creating a counter-narrative. They're ensuring that even if mainstream institutions ignore Black excellence, the historical record will show it existed, it mattered, and it was celebrated by the people it was created for.
What Happens on February 28?
The 57th NAACP Image Awards will air live on Saturday, February 28, 2026, at 8 PM ET/PT on BET with a simulcast on CBS. Comedian and actor Deon Cole will host from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Winners in non-televised categories will be recognized at the 57th NAACP Image Awards Creative Honors on February 26 and virtually on YouTube/NAACPPlus from February 23 to 25.
Public voting is open at www.naacpimageawards.net until February 7. This matters because it allows the community—not just industry insiders—to determine winners in select categories. It democratizes recognition, ensuring that commercial success or critical acclaim from majority-white institutions isn't the only metric of value.
When the ceremony airs, it will be one of the few remaining spaces on network television where Black excellence is centered rather than incidental. This is a space where Black hosts speak directly to Black audiences, without compromising their message for White comfort. Where Black joy isn't performed for mainstream consumption but celebrated within the community.
In an era when Black-led shows are being cancelled, when Black films are being passed over for awards despite critical and commercial success, when Black employees are being fired from diversity roles across sectors—this ceremony is resistance.
The Long Game
The NAACP has been fighting for civil rights since 1909. They've outlasted administrations that were openly hostile to Black people and survived eras when even talking about racial justice was dangerous. They've weathered McCarthy-era witch hunts, COINTELPRO infiltration, and decades of systematic attempts to undermine their work.
The Image Awards, at nearly 60 years old, are a relatively recent innovation. But they reflect the organization's understanding that cultural recognition is political power. Celebrating Black artistry is not frivolous—it is essential to documenting our existence and asserting our humanity.
This administration's assault on diversity will eventually end. The balance will eventually shift. However, the documentation of this period's events, including the celebration, erasure, and resistance, will endure. The NAACP Image Awards ensure that when historians look back at 2026, they'll see that even as federal programs were dismantled and corporate diversity initiatives collapsed, Black people continued to create, to celebrate each other, and to insist on visibility.
They'll see that Sinners received 18 NAACP Image Award nominations even though the Golden Globes largely ignored it. They'll see that Teyana Taylor was celebrated with six nominations even after the industry tried to shelve her. They'll see that journalists documenting attacks on HBCUs were honored even as those institutions were being defunded.
They'll see that when the machinery of government worked to erase Black people from institutional spaces, we responded not with silence but with celebration. Instead of retreating, we responded with recognition. Not with invisibility but with an emphatic declaration:
We See You.