July 01, 2016
A Fox News host criticized Temple graduate Jesse Williams' speech at the BET Awards about race in America in a blog post, calling it an "attack on white people."
Williams received the network's humanitarian award during a ceremony that aired Sunday, and the "Grey's Anatomy" actor used his acceptance speech as an opportunity to make a statement about police brutality against black people, citing the deaths of Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice.
He also addressed the broader scope of still-present racial injustice. Here's an excerpt of his speech, via Time:
We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo, 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 though… the thing is that just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.
Stacey Dash, who is black and co-hosts the Fox News show "Outnumbered," called Williams' speech "racist" and a "tirade" that was "nothing short of an attack on white people" in a blog post three days later. Here's what she wrote (h/t Philadelphia Daily News):
You’ve just seen the perfect example of a HOLLYWOOD plantation slave! Sorry, Mr Williams. But the fact that you were standing on that stage at THOSE awards tells people you really don’t know what your talking about. Just spewing hate and anger.
Because you my man are just like everyone else hustling to get money. But your cognitive dissidents has you getting it from THAT BYSTANDER whom YOU DONT NEED. Yes. BLACK ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION is WHITE OWNED.
GET over yourself and get on with it!
Dash also wrote about how Williams' speech caused a beef between Ernest Owens, editor of PhillyMag's G Philly and former PhillyVoice contributor, and Justin Timberlake.
After Timberlake tweeted how inspired he was by the speech, Owens asked if that meant he would stop appropriating black culture and music. Timberlake first responded that Owens needed to realize "we are the same," but would eventually apologize for anyone that felt he "was out of turn" after Owens accused him of being tone-deaf.
Dash wrote that Timberlake saying sorry was a mistake:
Justin, my dear, there is no “oneness” when it comes to Black Lives Matter. They’ve planted the seed of segregation and no longer want to live in “perfect harmony,” like the old song wished. And if Michael Jackson once sang, “It don’t matter if you’re black or white,” well, it does now, at least from their perspective.
Dash, for context, has been critical of BET before and has stirred controversy with her conservative opinions, leading to lots of reactions like this one:
Why won't Stacey Dash go on airplane mode? 😒😒😒
— Awesomely Luvvie (@Luvvie) June 30, 2016
