#StillWill I’m Not Slapping Away 30 Years of Excellence
We all saw the Oscar slap. We all heard the command that followed. We saw Chris look shocked. We felt his fear. We witnessed an outpour of support for Will in the moment that grew into an outpour of condemnation the next day. To be clear, I am not here to take a position of right or wrong. That is irrelevant. I am here to defend Black men’s right to be human, flawed, and not have to carry the image of an entire race on our backs.
Black men are no strangers to being the principal villains in the psychological thriller we call America. Chattel enslavement saw Black men branded as the brute and the buck animals bred for laborious service. 50 years after emancipation, the fear of Black men led our country to make non-prescription opioids illegal. United States Senators heard testimony proclaiming that ‘the negro-crazed brain’ was destroying the south and harpooned the fear of Black men raping white women into the hearts and minds of anyone who would listen. The next year, the movie The Birth of a Nation evolved film production, but it portrayed Black men as savage crazed rapists who needed to be isolated to protect American life-white life. Over 100-years later, we don’t realize how many people have subconsciously internalized this same distrust, disdain, and discontent for Black men.
Black men have been branded ‘the white people of Black people’ even without a thorough analysis of the harms and violence perpetrated against Black people by white violence. Nor was there any analysis of how centuries of enduring violence make acts of violence a trauma response for Black men, not our innate nature. So, what does any of this have to do with Will Smith? Vilifying Will Smith into complete career damnation, only attributing his actions to bruteness disallows his humanity to be seen and is not a victory for Black men or Black people.
Similar to racists not seeing Black men’s humanity, we unintentionally do the same. A stark example is how Will Smith revealed in his memoir that as an adult his “most violent trigger” is that he did nothing when his father would violently beat his mother. The Oscar winner candidly wrote about how those violent images still haunt and impact him as an adult. Perhaps more than any other childhood memory. Despite this revelation, I watched my social media timelines in disbelief. Many people dismissed Will Smith’s truth. The very same people who regularly repost memes about trauma could not allow themselves to acknowledge Will’s pain. However, for Black men having our pain dismissed is commonplace.
“He should have known better,” online critics scoffed. I believe he does know better, but two things can be true at once. Will can know better, and human emotion can cloud better judgment. While I cannot justify his actions, we who grew up playing the dozens know that jokes can hurt. We know sometimes we laugh to save face but internally cringe.
Joking or not, we cannot lightly practice violence against each other- I admit that. However, we can also admit that verbal violence is a real thing. Furthermore, it’s easy to say a joke was not that bad if you are not the subject of the joke, so whether the joke warranted a slap or not, I’ll leave it up to you. However, this moment does warrant an acknowledgment that years of jokes and mockery can hurt. For example, two years prior, after a Red Table Talk addressing R&B singer August Alsina & Jada Smith’s entanglement, Will saw his pain immortalized into a meme. This is only one of many examples where Smith withstood the cruelty and jokes of the public. For nearly 3-decades, Will Smith has withstood verbal attacks against his family, his wife, and his lifestyle with grace and class and did not allow himself to boil over. But, we must admit that boiling points exist. If you put a pot of water on the stove and raise the fire, it will eventually spill over. Unfortunately, we witnessed this happen with two beloved legends in our community.
After 30 years of making us smile, laugh, and cry with acts such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Bad Boys, Men in Black, Independence Day, All of Us, Fela on Broadway, and hundreds of philanthropic ventures, we cannot allow one moment to erase that. Will Smith is the same Black father who would fly from China every weekend from filming a movie with one son to attend another son’s football games. That is the Will Smith I have grown to admire. Yes, that slap damaged Will’s reputation as a role model, but he took responsibility, and he apologized, are those actions not worthy of role model status? I will not let y’all slap away Will Smith’s positive track record, which far outweighs anything negative, based on one mistake. I understand throwing Black men away is easy; it is a subconsciously internalized response, but we are not slapping away 30-years of excellence based on two minutes of bad judgment. So for me, it’s #stillwill #stillChris #stillBlackmen #stillBlackpeople.
