Member-only story
I Was Blocked for Disagreeing that White People Who Condemn Will Smith are Racist
An author on this platform recently penned an article about Will Smith’s actions at the Oscars titled “Will Someone, Please, Think of the White People.” Her argument was that white people criticizing Smith are employing racist stereotypes about black men being violent and domestic abusers. This suggests that if a white man hit another white man on stage, he wouldn’t be criticized. Or perhaps he could claim that he was being subjected to sexist views about male violence? Or maybe we’re just supposed to give a famous black man a free pass because he’s black? I’m not really sure.
The author argues that Jada is also being subjected to the racist notion that black women are responsible for other people’s actions: “What we’re actually talking around is how defendable a Black woman is. What is her value and why would anyone ever want to defend her?” She draws a link between Emmett Till who was murdered after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman in 1955, and the condemnation of Will Smith for defending Jada. This, she believes, shows that ‘to defend a Black woman flies so far in the face of normal that people have convinced themselves that in 2 seconds Jada used her facial expression to weaponize Will.”
