Black, white and ‘grey’ matter
5th July 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
I couldn’t bring myself to look at the BET Awards on June 26, but was glad to hear about “Grey’s Anatomy” star Jesse Williams’ remarks about racism, discrimination and white appropriation of Black music and culture.
As a Black man living in a majority-Black city run by a small but powerful white business community that has never allowed the Black masses to get a real taste of freedom, the young brother’s words resonated with me.
Prior to learning of his speech upon being awarded a humanitarian award at the BET show, I didn’t know who he was.
For those who didn’t hear anything about his speech, he certainly didn’t stick the script of most major awards shows by keeping his comments safe and bland. He took it to another level by speaking his mind and risking the wrath of Hollywood and White America by speaking up for the Black masses and those most negatively impacted by systemic racism and white privilege.
In accepting the Humanitarian of the Year Award, Williams, an Advancement Project board member and former public school teacher, shed some light on some of the myriad of challenges facing people of African descent,
He was gracious and conscious enough to dedicate the award to the warriors in the freedom struggle who are in the trenches every day fighting for the rights of people who sometimes resent them for being outspoken about the plight of Black people and show them very little in the way of gratitude, respect or appreciation.
“This is for the real organizers all over the country,” Williams said. “The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers of students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do.”
Williams, who took his outrage about the murder of Michael Brown to the streets of Ferguson, Mo. and is the executive producer of “Stay Woke,” a documentary about the birth and growth of the Black Lives Matter Movement which debuted in BET in May, used his time on stage to pay tribute to the many nameless, faceless freedom fighters who do the work but get very little credit for uplifting the community and working to dismantle white supremacy, “Black women who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves.
“We can and will do obeyer for you,” he promised.
Williams also called for constitutional policing in U.S. law enforcement agencies and an end to the senseless killing by police of unarmed Black men, women and children.
In the age of Justin Biebers, Iggy Azaleas and Justin Timberlakes and young whites’ fascination with hip-hop music and culture, Williams highlighted white consumption of Black culture and the simultaneous devaluation and erosion of Black people’s lives and constitutional and voting rights.
“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… ghetto-lyzing 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,” Williams said.
The “strange fruit” reference certainly hit home with a lot of Black people who are weary of watching unarmed Black men, women and children being gunned down by cops while law enforcement officers are now saying that they are being terrorized and targeted by Black and Brown people in the “inner city.”
Apparently, the powers that be took notice of Williams’ provocative acceptance speech, dispatching former “Clueless” sitcom star Stacy Dash to weigh in on the speech. She did just that, calling Williams a “Hollywood plantation slave,” which would have been insulting if it had come from anyone but her.
The biggest thing about Williams’ speech is not so much that it was said, but that it was delivered at the BET Awards and that it was delivered by a Black actor employed by a major television network in Hollywood.
Just as there are not a lot of athletes who would have the gall, courage and audacity to say the kinds of things the late, great Muhammad Ali said or jeopardize the kind of money the heavyweight boxer walked away from by standing up for his principles, it is hard to imagine that there are many actors and actresses of color in Hollywood who would display the kind of progressive-minded attitude and commitment to speaking out against racial injustice and white supremacy the way Jesse Williams did.
It simply does not happen in this day and age.
Hopefully, Williams’ words will touch the hearts and minds of the viewers and other Black entertainers who heard them and usher in a new era of renewed struggle and resistance to the racist oppression and exploitation that have been slowly killing people of African descent in this country since we were first dragged to these shores.
Harambee.
This article originally published in the July 4, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
