Stacey Dash is definitely not impressed with Jesse Williams’ headline-making speech on racism and inequality at the BET Awards on Sunday. In a blog post on Wednesday, the 49-year-old always outspoken actress bashed Williams’ speech, calling the entire BET network racist.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: BET is keeping racism and segregation alive and this past Sunday’s awards show proves it,” Dash writes. “Particularly the speech given by Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams, whose tirade after receiving the 2016 BET Humanitarian Award for his black activism was nothing short of an attack on white people.
“You’ve just seen the perfect example of a HOLLYWOOD plantation slave!” Dash continues. “Sorry, Mr. Williams. But the fact that you were standing on that stage at THOSE awards tells people you really don’t know what your [sic] talking about. Just spewing hate and anger.” Dash took issue with the 34-year-old actor’s words criticizing those speaking out against the Black Lives Matter movement.
“The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That’s not our job, all right? Stop with all that,” Williams said on Sunday. “If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest – if you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.”
“You my man are just like everyone else hustling to get money,” Dash responds. “But your cognitive dissidents has you getting it from THAT BYSTANDER whom YOU DON’T NEED. Yes. BLACK ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION is WHITE OWNED.” Dash also responded to Williams’ words on cultural appropriation.
“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,” Williams said.
“The thing is, though, just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.” The Clueless actress says it’s actually Williams who’s “ghetto-izing” black culture.
“That chip on the shoulders of people like you will weigh you down and keep you from flying free,” Dash writes. “But true freedom is never free. You have to know how to fly. If anyone is making you feel this way it’s you. Living in a psychological prison of your own making. If anyone is GHETTO-IZING anyone, it’s people like you letting the BETs and other media outlets portray us in stereotypes.”
“GET over yourself and get on with it!” she adds.ET spoke to Williams about his politically-charged speech at the BET Awards on Sunday, and the father of two said he was delivering a message on behalf of those who need to be heard.
“I’m here for all the incredible protestors, activists, attorneys, organizers that are sacrificing [an] incredibly great deal to be heard and get access to equal rights and justice in this country,” Williams said. “[The BET Awards] recognizing me is really recognizing them in my view, and I think that means that we’re getting traction.”
After his speech, actor Samuel L. Jackson commended Williams while accepting the BET Lifetime Achievement Award. “Jesse’s the closest thing I’ve heard to a 1960s activist,” Jackson marveled. “That brother is right, and he is true.”