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| Jesse Williams passionate speech on Blackness goes viral. |
Jesse Williams plays Avery Jackson on the Shonda Rhimes medical drama Grey's Anatomy. He's a passionate supporter of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. And today, he couldn't be more prouder of the group and their place in history.
He accepted the BET Humanitarian Award on Sunday.
Couldn't think of a more deserving person at tonight's #BETAwards, congrats @iJesseWilliams! https://t.co/oddL5D30Mu pic.twitter.com/f8MaaEFMhf— EBONY MAGAZINE (@EBONYMag) June 26, 2016
Williams delivered a passionate speech about how the junk food media reacts towards Black America. He addressed the recent high profile police incident that killed unarmed Black citizens.
He also singles out the situations at the Cincinnati Zoo and Walt Disney World as an example to how the junk food media reacts towards it.
Peace peace. Thank you, Debra. Thank you, BET. Thank you Nate Parker, Harry and Debbie Allen for participating in that.
Before we get into it, I just want to say I brought my parents out tonight. I just want to thank them for being here, for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career, and that they make sure I learn what the schools were afraid to teach us. And also thank my amazing wife for changing my life.
Now this award - this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students, that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. It's kind of basic mathematics, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize. Now this is also in particular for the black women, in particular, who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.
Now what we've been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what's going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.
Yesterday would’ve been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday, so I don’t want to hear anymore about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt.
Now the thing is though, all of us in here getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. Now dedicating our lives to get money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body, when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies.
There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There has been no job we haven't done, there's been no tax they haven't levied against us, and we've paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here, 'You’re free,’ they keep telling us, ‘But she would’ve been alive if she hadn’t acted so… free'.
Freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but, you know what though, the hereafter is a hustle. And let's get a couple of things straight, just a little sidenote, the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That's not our job, stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people than do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.
We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind, while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is, just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real.
Thank you.
This passionate speech has went viral and it's expected that conservatives will laud the speech as "anti-cop", "racist" or "anti-White". And the concern trolls will say that Black leaders don't care about violence in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, etc.
Justin Timberlake caught some flack after being touched by Williams' speech.
Timberlake posted on social media to praise Williams. It kind of backfired.
— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) June 27, 2016
He got some serious flack from fans and critics for not understanding that he is part of the problem.
He responded back to his critics.
Oh, you sweet soul. The more you realize that we are the same, the more we can have a conversation.— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) June 27, 2016
Bye. https://t.co/FeTmGLOKVc
He soon would apologize for his choice of words.
I apologize to anyone that felt I was out of turn. I have nothing but LOVE FOR YOU AND ALL OF US.— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) June 27, 2016
--JT
This speech has gotten so much attention I bet you money, some agitator will mention it.
Watch the video.
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