Terry Crews has come out to defend his “black supremacy” tweets, saying that his words had been taken out of context.
Crews sparked controversy over the weekend when he tweeted, “Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth. Like it or not, we are in this together.”
The backlash to those comments was immediate, with even Tyler James Williams, who once played Crews’ son on Everybody Hates Chris, responding to Crews, saying:
“Terry, brother, I know your heart and you know I have love for you and always will. No one is calling 4 black supremacy & the narrative that we are hurts our cause & our people. We’re just vigorously vetting our ‘allies’ because time & time again they have failed us in the past.”
On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Crews was given a chance to explain his tweets.
“One of the big things I tweeted was the fact that I felt that defeating white supremacy without the help of white people could create a black supremacy,” Crews explained. “Now, the term ‘black supremacy’ was just destroyed.”
“What I was trying to say is: I, as a member of the black community, there have been so-called gatekeepers who decide who’s black and who’s not. In this effort to really push equality and to end white supremacy and systemic racism, there are certain black people who have determined that what I’m doing has no bearing. I have been rendered moot because I’m ‘successful.’ My point is just the fact that we need all of us.”
Crews highlighted that for racial dynamics to change, white people would have to be also educated and conscientised about racial issues.
“Women’s rights without men, nothing changes. If men don’t understand how to treat women, we’re going to have a problem. And it’s the same thing with white people. If white people don’t understand how to treat us as a community, we’re going to have a problem.
“But also, in our own community, we have to know how to treat each other. We have to allow ourselves to agree, to disagree, to have different viewpoints. Because right now, in the words of Joe Biden, if you don’t vote for me, “you ain’t black.”
