Jesse Williams gives 'one of the best award speeches ever'

Actor Jesse Williams had the audience on its feet with his powerful acceptance speech at the 2016 BET Awards this weekend.

The Grey's Anatomy star was honoured with the Humanitarian Award for his involvement in Black Lives Matter, which was originally formed in response to multiple incidents involving US police officers shooting dead unarmed black people but has expanded to confront wider issues of racial inequality.

"This is for the real organisers all over the country," said Williams. "The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realising that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Williams became involved in Black Lives Matter in 2014, during the civil unrest following the shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and his speech referred to a string of other high-profile deaths at the hands of police officers.

"Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than it is to live in 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt," he said.

He also highlighted the debate over cultural appropriation, accusing mainstream white culture of "gentrifying our genius" and "trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit".

He added: "We're done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us."

The audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles "rose to their feet and were visibly emotional", reports The Independent.

It was "one of the most memorable speeches in award show history", said the Washington Post, with columnist Soraya Nadia McDonald comparing Williams to singer and actor Harry Belafonte, who in the 1960s used his star power as a platform to advocate for the civil rights movement.