Will Smith shared a statement via Instagram on Monday (Mar. 28), apologizing for slapping Chris Rock in the face at the Oscars on Sunday night.
The nation witnessed two different approaches taken by Black men in defending the honor of a Black woman.
Last week, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., offered soothing words to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court nominee who endured a disgraceful verbal assault by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Don’t worry, my sister. Don’t worry. God has got you,” Booker said, moving Jackson to tears. “And how do I know that? Because you’re here. And I know what it’s taken for you to sit in that seat.”
He concluded: “When that final vote happens, and you ascend onto the highest court in the land, I’m going to rejoice. And I’m going to tell you right now, the greatest country in the world, the United States of America, will be better because of you.”
Sunday night, at the Academy Awards, actor Will Smith came to the defense of his wife by assaulting comedian Chris Rock. We are not better for it.
Rock had made Jada Pinkett Smith the butt of a joke about her close-cropped hair that — given her affliction with the hair-loss condition alopecia — was unfunny, insensitive and mean, assuming Rock knew of her condition.
Rock — who made a 2009 documentary on hair — surely knows that Black women have a complicated relationship with theirs — one inextricably tied to American racism and white standards of beauty. But nowadays, Black women are embracing their natural hair, including Jada Smith. On TikTok, days before the Academy Awards, she related how Hollywood had forced her into an unnatural relationship with her hair.
“So I had to learn to get the courage to go, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that.’ Which is why I feel the freedom today — I don’t give two craps what people think of this bald head of mine. Because guess what? I love it.”
All of which makes what transpired Sunday even more jarring. Will Smith initially laughed at Rock’s joke; his wife rolled her eyes. Seconds later, he strode purposely toward an unsuspecting Rock and slapped him in the face. Some folks assumed it was all staged, until Smith started yelling profanely at Rock.
And then, the show went on — an apt metaphor for our nation’s approach to violence.
Smith was awarded an Oscar. The audience dutifully gave him a standing ovation in the aftermath of what writer friend Ginger McKnight Chavers described on Instagram as a “WWE-style minstrel show.”
A chunk of the social media universe rallied behind Smith for standing by his woman — no matter that he’d upstaged his own triumph and taken a wrecking ball to his career and societal norms. And he diminished the moment for tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams, and their father, Richard Williams, the man Smith portrayed in his Oscar-winning turn in “King Richard.”
Ironically — onstage after the slap — the role of peacemaker was left to Sean “Diddy” Combs, part of a disastrous 1990s bicoastal hip-hop feud that culminated in the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G.
“I know we’re all still processing, but the way casual violence was normalized tonight by a collective national audience will have consequences that we can’t even fathom in the moment,” tweeted Janai Nelson, president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund.
Oh, I can fathom the consequences.
It’s no news flash that we have a major gun violence problem in our region — one that disproportionately affects Black men. My work inbox can hardly keep pace with police news releases on the latest shooting. Too many Black lives have been ruined, or lost, by the lack of impulse control on display Sunday night in Hollywood.
Emmy Award-winning director Jesse Vaughan of Richmond posted on Facebook that he was a friend of Jada Smith back in the day and mentored her on her first director’s job. He has also met Will Smith on more than one occasion, he said.
“All I have to say is this — something is terribly wrong for you to retaliate like that at the Oscars,” Vaughan wrote. “To me it is a cry for help.”
By Monday, folks appeared to be coming to their senses, with Smith finally apologizing to Rock.
“Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive,” he said, calling his behavior “unacceptable and inexcusable.”
His wife posted on Instagram: “This is a season for healing and I’m here for it.”
Jada Smith, in one of her more memorable roles, played a strong-willed single mom in “Menace II Society” who tries, unsuccessfully, to rescue the violent manchild in her life. Toxic masculinity and female empowerment are a poor match.
As a senator showed a beleaguered judge, you can lift a woman up without destroying everything around you.
