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(Image: Youtube screenshot)
Last night, actor Jesse Williams, 34, was awarded the Humanitarian Award for his activism at the 2016 BET Awards held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
His inspiring and empowering speech, which we believe is bound be the vision and mission statement for the Black Lives Matter movement, earned him a standing ovation.
After wiping our eyes and blowing our noses following his speech, we came to the conclusion that Jesse Williams deserves to be president – and here are five reasons why:
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1. HE’S INSPIRATIONAL
Later in the show, Samuel L. Jackson said he hadn’t heard a speech like it since the 60s (presumably referring to activist Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech”).
2. HIS HUMILITY IS PRAISEWORTHY
In his speech, he refused to take credit and give the usual “thanks mom and dad” monologue. Instead, Jessie recognised, honoured and thanked each person who was and is doing their part to fight the system that has “divide[d] and impoverish[ed]” the black people in America.
3. HE’S A PROUD FEMINIST
Jesse recognsied and accredited the role women play in “spending their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves”.
4. HE REFUSES TO FOCUS SOLELY ON THE FUTURE WHEN REMNANTS FROM THE PAST STILL LINGER
Jesse acknowledged that Saturday June 23 would have been Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday (back in 2012, Tamir was shot and killed by two policemen in a city park) and paid tribute to him and other black victims like Sandra Bland, Eric Garner and Darrien Hunt who were killed by police. He spoke about how he refuses to accept “how far we’ve come” when killings like this are still happening.
5. HE APPROACHED THE TOPIC OF BEING ‘FREE’ IN ‘THE LAND OF THE FREE’ AND TOOK ON THE CRITICS OF THE RESISTANCE
“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. The thing is, just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real.” ‘Nuff said.
Read Jesse’s inspiring full speech here:
“This award, this is not for me. This is for the real organisers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students who are realising 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 mobilise. Now this is also 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 side note, the burden of the brutalised 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, then 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. 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. The thing is, just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real.”
