Jesse Williams, How Does it Feel To Be A Problem?

Like so many others I cheered and applauded Jesse Williams's moving speech as he accepted the 2016 BET Humanitarian of the Year Award. Then I braced for the inevitable backlash.

The Grey's Anatomy actor's powerful speech discussed racism and police brutality, slamming critics of the Black Lives Matter movement. But he did not stop there. As Eternity Martis noted, his shout out to Black women's sacrifices and suffering lingered well after he moved on to other topics.

Williams challenged those in the audience to become more concerned and engaged and to use their power and clout to do more and to make a difference. It has been described by some as a speech for a generation.

It reminded me of an interview where the legendary Nina Simone discussed the duty of an artist. Simone, never one to shy away from controversy or activism, stated:

"You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times."

And in my mind that was what Jesse Williams did. He spoke to the times in which we are currently living.

Sadly, I was not surprised by the 'sturm und drang' that followed.

A petition, started on July 1, accused Williams of making "a racist, hate speech against law enforcement and White people," has garnered thousands of signatures and called for Shonda Rhimes, Grey's Anatomy's creator, to fire him. On Monday, July 4, Rhimes - who previously tweeted praise for the speech - dismissed the petition with a single tweet:

(Incidentally, a counter-petition created to keep Williams on the show currently tops the original petition by several thousand signatures as of this post.)

In the public eye, Jesse Williams has gone from being an actor on a popular television show to someone with integrity and intelligence who spoke truth to power; and in some minds that turned him from "blue-eyed hunk" into a "problem." W.E.B. Du Bois, in his turn of the century treatise, The Souls of Black Folk, wrote:

"Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem?"

In 2013 Melissa Harris -Perry said this about the meaning of the passage:

"Everyone has problems. It is the human condition. No amount of wealth. No racial privilege. No righteousness of purpose and action leads to a life without problems. Everyone has them. But Du Bois was pointing to something different. Not just having problems, but being a problem. How does it feel to be a problem? To have your very body and the bodies of your children to be assumed to be criminal, violent and malignant."

Du Bois wrote of Black men:

"He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius."

So, no, I am not surprised at the blow back towards Williams or towards others like him who have the audacity to challenge the racial status quo in this country, and do so unapologetically.

That Sunday evening as I listened to Jesse Williams's speech, the lyrics from a song made famous by Nina Simone ran through my head:

"Oh but my joy of today, Is that we can all be proud to say: To be young, gifted and Black is where it's at' (Songwriters: Irvine, Weldon/Simone, Nina).