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Jesse Williams: Try Telling Dead Black People That Racism Is Over

Kaitlan Collins Contributor
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Jesse Williams is being hailed for his speech on racism during the BET Awards Sunday night.

(Photo: Anna Webber/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

(Photo: Anna Webber/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

During his acceptance speech for the Humanitarian award, the 34-year-old “Grey’s Anatomy” actor said people should try telling Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland or Eric Garner that racism is dead.

“Now, this award, this is not for me,” Williams said. “This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do.”

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“All right? It’s kind of basic mathematics. The more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize.”

“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function in ours.”

“Yesterday would have 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 and then going home to make a sandwich.”

“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 Darrien Hunt.”

“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. Thank you.”