There certainly hasn’t been a shortage of opinions in the days following now Academy Award-winning actor Will Smith’s decision to smack comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars ceremony on Sunday. To some, violence is violence, whether enacted by the Hollywood elite or a student on the schoolyard, and Smith deserves to be punished in some form. To others, Smith’s action—though indefensible—was not the most harmful occurrence that night, considering the tasteless joke Rock delivered as a presenter. He compared Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, to the bald star of the 1997 action film G.I. Jane—even though Pinkett Smith has been quite vocal about her struggle with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss.
I’m one of the others: concerned less about an actor’s indiscretion than the systemic violence ignored every day because the victims are Black, female, or God-forbid, a combination of the two. As someone who has dealt with hair loss, I was livid for Jada Pinkett Smith, so much so that I didn’t want to talk about Smith’s reaction to the look on his wife’s face. I tweeted: “The only thing I want to talk about is how it feels to be a Black woman in a space with few other Black people and have a Black man stand on stage and make fun of your hair.”
RELATED STORY: Hijacked by his ego, Will Smith missed his opportunity to address bullying, respect for Black women
Disability rights activists have rallied in Pinkett Smith’s defense. Long tired of being the butt of comedians’ jokes, they appear to be even more exhausted with the hypocritical system of ethics that ignores systematic brutality but condemns violence when the culprit is a person of color.
If you can’t put yourself in Pinkett Smith’s shoes in that moment, you’re not qualified to dismiss Rock’s statement as “just a joke.”
Opinion writer Roxane Gay wrote for The New York Times that, although she is not defending Will Smith, she is defending "thin skin."
"I think a lot about how we are constantly asked to make our skin ever thicker," Gay wrote. "Toughen yourself, we’re told, whoever we are, whatever we’ve been through or are going through. Stop being so brittle and sensitive. Lighten up.”
Gay asked who is served by thick skin. "Those who want to behave with impunity," she answered.
What added insult to injury was the much-tweeted ideology that, as a white space, the Academy Awards should be too sacred for Smith’s conduct. It is as if slapping someone at the Source Awards, or backstage—somewhere away from the gaze of white society—would somehow be tolerable.
Bernice King, the youngest child of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., weighed in on that element of the public discourse on Wednesday. “I encourage engaging with respect,” she tweeted. “But respectability [which is different] doesn’t cure racism.
“Racism has no regard for respectability.
Reminder: My father was assassinated while wearing a suit.
Let’s be well because our wellness matters, not because the white gaze matters.”
I can understand why others were moved to discuss Smith’s actions, and particularly the apparent indifference that followed at the Oscars ceremony, but what I can’t understand is why violence is so frequently discussed in relation to its effects on white people—even when both the person committing the violence and the victim of it are Black.
At this point in my life, I can’t justify smacking someone because of how I’m feeling or how my partner is feeling, and I don’t think Will Smith can either.
He released a statement acknowledging his wrong-doing on Tuesday:
Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally.
I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.
I would also like to apologize to the Academy, the producers of the show, all the attendees and everyone watching around the world. I would like to apologize to the Williams Family and my King Richard Family. I deeply regret that my behavior has stained what has been an otherwise gorgeous journey for all of us.
I am a work in progress.
Sincerely,
Will
Jada penned an Instagram post the same day: "This is a season for healing and I'm here for it."
Both statements followed an immediate apology Will offered the Academy in his acceptance speech for Best Actor in a Lead Role for the movie King Richard.
Smith won the award for his depiction of Richard Williams, the father of tennis greats Serena and Venus Williams. And perhaps the greatest tragedy in this incident is that Will’s reaction eliminated the possibility of that sentence being the lede of this piece and so many others.
The tragedy is not what smacking Chris Rock did to white people.