Terry Crews says #BLM mustn’t morph into '#BlackLivesBetter', gets called 'white America’s favored token'
On Tuesday, June 30, actor Terry Crews courted outrage after tweeting, “If you are a child of God, you are my brother and sister. I have family of every race, creed, and ideology. We must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn’t morph into #blacklivesbetter.”
This is not the first time that the ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ actor has said something controversial about either race or the Black Lives Matter movement. Earlier this month, he had said on Twitter, “Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth. Like it or not, we are all in this together.”
The latest tweet caused a storm, and soon Terry Crews was trending on Twitter. A Twitter user replied to Crews’ tweet, saying, “Gah. You could have left out that last sentence. No one wants to be better. We want to be treated fairly and equal.”
Others were less patient. A Twitter user wrote, “It's actually embarrassing how intent you are at undermining people who are fighting for their humanity to be viewed EQUALLY. Nobody is taking it there except you and those uncomfortable with having to address the elephant in the room. I implore you please do better, this ain't it.”
Another said, “I don't understand why your posts are so pandering to (unfounded) arguments against the BLM movement. No one, NOT A DAMN SOUL, said #blacklivesbetter. This is being willfully destructive, disingenuous, with microaggressions towards BLM. I tire of saying ‘do better’... but DO BETTER.”
Several people expressed similar sentiments. A Twitter user wrote, “Terry Crews constantly tweets out the same things racists worry about. Just look at his likes as proof, MAGA lunatics, QAnons, and fake pro-lifers. He knows exactly who his audience is.”
Larry Johnson of the ‘Sight To The Blind’ podcast compared Terry Crews to a scene from the 1972 blaxploitation film ‘Trick Baby’, where Donald Symington’s character Morrison says, “You know we have to move them up. If we leave a smart one in the ghetto, he might develop into a leader against us. If we raise him up into white society, we neutralize. He feels compelled to try to act like us, he loses his identity, and uh, his racial anger if he has any. He becomes alien to his brothers, and they realize he sold them out and they grow to hate him. He becomes worthless to them and safe for us. In fact, in his love for the creature comforts, except for his color, he becomes one of us.”
Responses to his tweet also brought back the references to the 2004 comedy film, ‘White Chicks’, something that happened the last time he made the controversial “black supremacy” statement. In the film, he played the role of Latrell Spencer, a well-to-do black man who falls in love with a white girl, and finds himself heartbroken when he learns that the white girl he fell in love with was actually an undercover black FBI agent. “They’ve stopped filming ‘White Chicks’... you can break out of character now,” wrote a Twitter user.
“Terry Crews is threatened by a world that treats all Black people fairly, because he enjoys the benefits of being the token Black person. So as we fight for equality, he shifts his tactics to reminding white America, that still he stands out. Still, he is their favored token,” said a Twitter user.
While the critique keeps piling up, it seems unlikely that Crews will apologize. Following the outrage over his “black supremacy” comment, Crews defended his statement. On ‘The Talk’, Crews said, “What I said was, defeating white supremacy without white people could create black supremacy… We have people who have decided who is going to be black and who’s not... I’ve been called all kinds of things, like an Uncle Tom, simply because I’m successful, simply because I’ve worked my way out of Flint, Michigan.”
He added about using the term, “I can’t really regret it, because I really want the dialogue to come out. Maybe there’s another term that might be better -- we’re ‘separatist’ or ‘elitist’ or something like that. But the thing is, I’ve experienced supremacy even growing up. I’ve had black people tell me that the white man is the devil. I’ve experienced whole organizations that … because of the suffering of black people, they have decided that now, we are not equal, we're better. And I think that’s a mistake.”