Jesse Wiliams at the BET Awards

A fellow by the name of Jesse Williams gave an impassioned speech at the BET awards recently. It’s been getting some (almost viral) press so I watched/listened to it, and didn’t have any issue with it, actually thought it was a pretty good speech, and he’s a very passionate, eloquent, articulate speaker. I’m not sure, but I may have even shared his speech here.

At the time I thought no big deal – it truly was a heart felt speech.

Woke up this morning, and, noticed the “haters” baring their ugly teeth: apparently, a petition was created, asking for his tv show to fire him, since those people interpreted the speech as “racist”, i.e., it was a speech “against” white people. [I didn’t see it that way]

It’s got a “huge” number of people’s signatures already: 1,600.

[that last comment was sarcasm. There’s a counter petition with ten times as many signatures (so far), indicating how much people truly loved his speech.]

I just don’t get “haters”. If you don’t have anything positive to say, just keep quiet.

I’m now shaking my head. Who teaches these people to hate? Who teaches them to have so much hatred toward black people? I just don’t f’ing get it. Who teaches them that it’s ok to spew their nonsense. I really wonder if these people actually go to church, pretending to be loving Christians.

Sorry for this rant, but I was so surprised to learn there were people out there that didn’t understand where this gentleman was coming from, they didn’t understand the necessity of the speech, they hated it so much, they decided they needed to start a campaign to get this guy fired.

It just boggles my mind.