Thread by @DrBryanLeyva

White people often show outrage when Black ppl do “bad things.” But they are often silent when white ppl and the systems they’ve built, which are steeped in white supremacy, do bad things *to* Black ppl. This is a thread about how the Will and Chris incident became about race. 🧵

White people’s seeming disregard for Black lives, and the inconsistency in which they apply their outrage makes white people’s response to almost any situation involving Black people, however justified, feel almost wrong in and of itself. This is especially true when

white people start virtue signaling and grandstanding—
i.e. when they try to speak from a place of moral authority, speak about right and wrong in absolute terms without nuance, and try to enforce rigid “standards of conduct” onto others, that they themselves can’t even uphold.

I would argue that the reason why the Will and Chris incident became about race is not because most people were supportive of Will’s handling of the incident, but rather because they were indignant to the way White people responded to it— and rightfully so.

Sure, there will always be people, regardless of race, who will be okay with Will’s decision to backhand Chris because “he did what any real man would do to protect his wife.” However, I would argue that most* ppl wish Will would have to tried to “defend”or “protect”

Jada in a different way that didn’t involve hitting Chris. Whether Will’s response was more about protecting his own ego than about Jada, we will never know. All we can go by is what he tells us which is that “a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for [him] to bear.”

But you see, it’s not the incident itself that made this incident about race, but it’s what happened afterwards:

White people started grandstanding.
White feminists started to label Will’s behavior “toxic masculinity” without ever discussing the hurt caused to Jada who

was humiliated on national TV because of her autoimmune condition. Without mentioning that this wasn’t Chris’s first time making jokes at Jada’s expense. Without underscoring the need for and importance of protecting Black women, whom society so habitually fails to protect.

Then what happened:
“Violence is never the answer” white people cried.

So now violence is never the answer? What about when you commit violence? We saw white people unabashedly use this phrase, completely ignoring the fact that historically white people have justified

the most egregious atrocities (including lynching and arson) in the name of “protecting” white women from *suspected* threat.

For historical context, 14 year old Emmett was brutally murdered/lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after *being accused* of defending a white women.

It wasn’t till this year, 67 years after his death, that Congress passed the E.T. Antilynching Act.

Rosewood was a successful Black town until it was burned to the ground by a white mob seeking revenge for the *supposed* assault of a white woman. At least 6 people were killed.

But then this happened:
#TakeBackTheOscar — people started asking the National Academy to take back Will’s first ever Oscar which he earned for Best Actor in King Richards. As an aside, only four Black men have won Best Actor #OscarsSoWhite

And this is where we see double standards creep up again:

Roman Polanski received the Oscar for Best Director in 2003 for The Pianist. He didn’t attend the ceremony to avoid a pedophilia conviction/rape charge.

Harvey Weinstein has been involved in 81 Oscar wins and won individual Oscar (Best Picture) for 1998's Shakespeare in Love. He was prisoned for sexual assault and rape.

Where was the outrage then? Where are the calls for the Academy to revoke their Oscars?

And then we start to see instances of white people applauding Chris for how he responded to the situation, which anyone would agree took an incredible amount of restraint. But it’s THE WAY they were doing it that was weird.

White people focused almost exclusively on Chris’s behavior AFTER his attack on Jada, and in some instances it almost felt like they were praising him not for acting in congruence with his own moral values and principles, but for acting in concert with theirs.

Chris defied white people’s deeply-held stereotypes about how a Black man would* behave, and more importantly, acted in line with their ideas for how a Black man should* behave. Some ppl even were shocked that a physical brawl didn’t ensue— because that’s that they expected.

It doesn’t stop there:
We then saw white people using Chris to promote respectability politics, contrasting his behavior with Will’s as a way to demonize and criminalize Will, and to police the behavior of other Black men. A behavior that historically has been

romanticized in American novels and movies (a guy punching another guy for disrespecting their girlfriend or wife) all of a sudden became “how could he?!” and “how unAmerican,” simply a Black person did it. I’m not saying it was right. It wasn’t. But still this was weird to see.

Lastly, #ArrestWillSmith became a trending hashtag. But why? Chris already* said he would not press charges. CHRIS DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS. The call to arrest Will Smith became more about punishing a Black man and using him to set an example, than it was about justice and healing.

In summary, the Will and Chris incident at the Oscars didn’t have to be a race, but it became about it bc of white people’s pattern of silence when it comes to White on Black violence, and disproportionate obsession and outrage when it comes to “Black on Black violence.”

Will was wrong in assaulting Chris. Will acknowledged that in his recent apology. Chris also needs to take some responsibility and be more mindful of his words and jokes. It’s never okay to make fun of someone’s autoimmune condition on national TV. Ignorance is no excuse.

Some people will read this and say this is a prime example of whataboutism. But these issues are connected: one thing led to the other, and we can’t address one part of the issue and not the other. We also cannot wait till some future time to address it that may never come.

We must continue to call out these doubles standards.
We must continue to see white silence as violence.
And we must continue to point out the hypocrisy of white outrage.

At the end of the day it’s about proportionality, which is a cornerstone for justice.

White outrage needs to be proportional, but it also should be directed towards the violent and oppressive systems they’ve created, and not towards Black people. Because as Denzel Washington and Tyler Perry showed, we got us. We need y’all to focus on y’all.
//The End//