“Grey’s Anatomy” fans can relax now. Jesse Williams isn’t going to be fired from the show after a Change.org petition was launched calling for him to be given the boot from – a petition that drew over 5,000 signatures within about 3 days.
This was in response to Williams’ provocative BET Awards acceptance speech, which went viral.
“Jesse Williams spewed a racist, hate speech against law enforcement and white people at the BET awards,” the petition’s creator, Erin Smith, writes. “If this was a white person making the same speech about an African American, they would have been fired and globally chastised, as they should be, but there has been no consequences to Williams’ actions.”
Williams made the speech after he accepted a humanitarian award at the BET Awards for his activism: “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 strained fruit,” Williams said. “The thing is that just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.”
Watch his full speech below if you’re one of the few who has not seen it.
In response to the petition to remove Williams from “Grey’s Anatomy,” opposing petitions were created urging ABC and show creator Shonda Rhimes to not fire Williams for speaking out (something that some thought might hurt his career, given a history of Hollywood talents being effectively blacklisted after making what others deem controversial comments). And in response to the entire fiasco, Rhimes finally dismissed any concerns about Williams’ status with a single tweet:
Um, people? Boo don’t need a petition. #shondalandrules
— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) July 5, 2016
Case closed!
And if you missed it, here’s Williams’ BET Awards acceptance speech which sparked the entire thing:
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