Award shows are typically only entertaining if we follow the Black Twitter commentary (we’ve discussed this before, Black Twitter plays no games). Yesterday’s BET Award Show was no exception.
If you missed the show, here are the highlights in summary:
- Beyonce opened the show with a performance of Freedom, featuring K Dot.
- Prince tributes galore.
- Jesse Williams won the Humanitarian award and gave a life-changing acceptance speech that deserves endless RT’s/faves/head-nods.
En lieu of re-watching the show or trolling the interwebs for the awesome speech, watch it here.
Better yet, read the transcript in case you need to copy/paste some quotables into your Twitter feed.
http://genius.com/Jesse-williams-2016-bet-humanitarian-award-speech-annotated
This speech was everything you needed to hear, no matter what role you play in the conversation.
What I found most awe-inspiring was Jesse’s ability to pay due respect to black women and their vital role in today’s culture. As a bi-racial man, raised by a white woman, Jesse shows that you don’t have to be a woke, third-eye open, afro and dashiki-wearin’ full black person to understand the message that is seeping out of every crevice in today’s media. On the contrary, our inherently ignored social issues need to be screamed from the mountain tops from anyone with a mouthpiece because everyone should be concerned with equal rights and the oppression of black culture occurring all around the world.
Thank you, Jesse.
Soul Culture 