Jesse Williams has spoken. Hopefully Black Hollywood and Black America truly listened.
Most of the awards, performances – even the highly anticipated (and highly publicized) Prince tributes – were merely afterthoughts from last night’s BET Awards as boldly stated, unapologetic charge for black empowerment became the biggest highlights of 2016.
Beyoncé’s ‘Freedom’
“What’s happening?” seemed to be the consensus of the faces on site as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice boomed through the speakers to begin the opening performance of the 2016 BET Awards.
Rows of female dancers marched through the aisles in sync with the beat, but onlookers expressed more confusion than anticipation.
Then Beyoncé emerged on stage to present “Freedom,” and the entire Microsoft Theater lost its collective mind.
The response is standard for a surprise Beyoncé performance – which saw Kendrick Lamar join her on stage for the assist – but the hope was that the content of the song would resonate as much as her mere presence.
By night’s end though there was no doubt regarding the impact – and necessity –of using one’s platform to incite consciousness.
Jesse’s mic drop for justice
2016 Humanitarian Award Winner Jesse Williams drove the point of activism home, and stole the entire show in the process.
“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 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.”
Williams has been compared to Harry Belafonte because of how he uses his position in the mainstream entertainment industry to push for social justice.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” star was on the frontlines of Ferguson and uses his social media presence and community service affiliations to fight against racism – and particularly to voice his disgust with the trend of people of color being killed at the hands of law enforcement.
“Yesterday would have been a young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday so I don’t wanna hear any more 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 and then going home to make a sandwich,” Williams said as he accepted his award. “Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than it is to live in 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Dorian Hunt.”
For those who have kept up with Jesse Williams since Ferguson, the mic-drop worthy message he delivered while accepting as the 2016 Humanitarian Award recipient at last night’s BET Awards was nothing new.
What hasn’t necessarily been part of his narrative was him calling fellow celebrities to task.
“Now the thing is though, all of us in here are getting money; that alone isn’t gonna stop this,” Williams said. “Dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back for someone to 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?”
The brief commercial for his Hollywood peers to join him on the “woke” side gave way to a hard-hitting demand that the masses join the movement.
“Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but you know what though, the hereafter is a hustle. We want it now,” Williams said. “And let’s get a couple things straight, and this is a little side note: 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, then you better have an establish record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions for those who do. Sit down.”
Williams’ final thoughts keenly expressed the reality of the black experience – particularly with respect to popular culture and entertainment.
“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries,” Williams said. “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, and 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.”
