Jesse Williams Hits Home Run With BET Awards Speech

Jesse Williams wowed the BET Awards this week with an impassioned speech as he accepted his award for Humanitarianism. He dedicated his speech to ‘the activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students’ and more widely to black women, additionally; his parents and wife.

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The speech, which followed the themes of the popular hashtag '#blacklivesmatter', had most of the audience on their feet. Williams touched on many issues that are currently being fought all over the world, but most prominently, in America. Many of the most controversial stories were mentioned throughout the acceptance speech, along with the loss of young lives due to alleged police misconduct. Williams payed homage to many victims of police brutality which continues to be a hot topic in American society; among those mentioned and honoured were 12 year old Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and Sandra Bland.

As well as police brutality, Williams touched on the subject of Cultural Appropriation. Another topic causing much debate across the world; whilst the oppressed mainly see it as them being stripped of their culture and used as 'costumes', whereas those adopting the culture see it as sharing. Williams calls out 'this invention called whiteness' as he further explains:

'[it] 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. Ghettoising 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'

Clearly a parallel for modern slavery, Williams shows that blackness is still deemed as inferior in society, no matter how far the world thinks we have come.

The empowering speech has been criticised, however. Unfortunately mainly from the white community, the most noteworthy coming from Tomi Lahren, a conservative who believes the BLM movement is advocating violence against police. This kind of thought process sums up the 'reverse racism' myth. Which, in short, reverse racism doesn't exist, as the oppressed cannot dominate their societal oppressors. Lahren commented about the BET awards; 'notably they were very black', which of course they would be, being the Black Entertainment Television awards. She then went on to suggest Williams speech was nothing short of a pity party;

You're not a humanitarian, you're not a unifier. You're not teaching black children to go forth and conquer, you're teaching them to feel sorry for themselves. Nice work, and how about you sit down.'

Williams proved himself a unifier of the audience as his speech received mainly praise. Williams wasn't only criticised from the white community, which, in many ways, has come to be expected. Stacey Dash has also received astounding amount of backlash for calling Williams a 'Hollywood Plantation Slave'. Following this, many are deeming her as 'self-hating' and being ashamed of her black skin.

The thing that made me sit up and take note, was the pure eloquence with which Williams delivered his speech. His passion and his knowledge astounded me, and although the Black Lives Matter movement is one I have followed, and supported wholeheartedly, Williams made me want to do more.

Williams ended the speech with the hauntingly beautiful and accurate line about black culture 'the thing is, just because we're magic, doesn't mean we're not real'.