Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Celebrity, Racism, Black Lives Matter, US News
Emily Brown
Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews has described tweets he posted in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement as a 'mistake'.
Crews reflected on the posts he made two years ago during a recent appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah following the release of his new book, Tough: My Journey to True Power.
Noah described how the actor became one of 'the most hated individuals almost overnight', with internet users accusing him of having 'betrayed Black people' with the posts which followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020.
As protests continued across the globe and calls for justice grew ever louder, Crews took to Twitter on 8 June, 2020 to write: “Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth. Like it or not, we are all in this together.”
Another post read: "Any Black person who calls me a c*** or and Uncle Tom for promoting EQUALITY is a Black Supremist, because they have determined who's Black and who is not."
"Please know that everything I've said comes from a spirit of love and reconciliation, for the Black community first, then the world as a whole, in hopes to see a better future for Black people," Crews wrote in a third post.
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A couple of weeks later, Crews sparked further controversy by posting a tweet which read: “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."
Crews sought to clarify what he had meant in the latter post as he reflected on his comments during his interview with Noah, saying: "What I meant was, if we don't start this movement with the idea of reconciliation, we are just postponing a greater war.
"And my whole thing is, I didn't hear a lot of reconciliation... We have to reconcile, white and Black, male and female, Republican and Democrat, we have to find a way to reconcile or we're going to kill what we have."
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Though he suggested his tweets had been misconstrued, the actor acknowledged the posts were a 'mistake', saying: "It was a mistake to tweet that out at that time."
He continued: "I really do want to apologise to anybody who was offended by these tweets and was hurt deeply because as an African American man, a Black man here in this country, I did not want to give the perception that we’re supposed to gloss this over and forget the death of George Floyd, the murder of George Floyd.
“The need is for us as a people to actually come together... This is our country. We died and fought, and I’m not giving it away. This is our inheritance.”
Crews talks further about his thoughts on the tweets in his book.
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If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article and wish to speak to someone in confidence, contact Stop Hate UK by visiting their website www.stophateuk.org