The 2016 BET Awards were more powerful than ever before, with iconic moments and performances that will be remembered for a lifetime. Some of the most profound and epic moments include Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s intense and astonishing performance of their collaboration Freedom. Beyoncé annihilated vocals and choreography while thrashing in a shallow pool of water on the stage, followed by Kendrick’s immaculate deliverance of his fiery verses. The two end thing high-energy song by splashing around with vigor and ferocity, expressing the steady rise of black people from the racial oppression that we have endured for far too long. This was clearly one of the greatest performances of all time.
Everyone in attendance at the award show were remarkably dressed, with outfits ranging from afrocentric and vibrant to outfits that were perfectly jazzy and scintillating. Seeing black women embrace and flaunt their dewy, dark, effortlessly stunning skin and bold fashion taste is always a blessing. Black girl magic was definitely in full effect. Speaking of black girl magic, Jennifer Hudson brought the house down with her spirited and heartfelt tribute to the late musical icon Prince, singing Purple Rain with Stevie Wonder and Tori Kelly. She sang with so much emotion and magnitude, it had me sobbing on my couch, and had the entire audience standing and singing along. Jennifer most definitely honored Prince and gave arguably the best performance of the night.
One of the most inspiring and unapologetically black moments was actor Jesse Williams and his acceptance speech for the Humanitarian Award, which he won for his work on several civil rights projects, his prolific contributions to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and his tireless efforts to provide support and awareness through the platform that he has obtained as an actor. As Jesse eloquently stated:
“This award… this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country, the activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers and students, who are realizing that a system meant to divide and impoverish us cannot stand if we do. It’s kind of basic mathematics: the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize. Now this is also, in particular, for the black women who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and we will be better for you. Now, what we have been doing is looking at the data, and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm, and not kill white people everyday. So what is going to happen is that we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country, or we will restructure their function and ours. Yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s fourteenth birthday, so I do not want to hear anymore about how far we have come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a twelve year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it is so much better to live in 2012, tell that to Eric Garner, tell that to Sandra Bland, tell that to Dorian Hunt. All of us in here getting money, that alone is not going to stop this. Dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our bodies, when spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get payed for brands on our bodies? There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of, there has been no job that we have not done, there has been no tax that they have levied against us and we have payed all of them; yet freedom is somehow always conditional here. ‘You are free’ they keep telling us, but she would have been alive if she would not have acted so free. Freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but the hereafter is a hustle, and we want it now. The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That is not our job, so stop with all of that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions to those who do; sit down. We have been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we are done watching, and waiting, while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment, like oil. Ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius, and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is: just because we are magic does not mean we are not real.”
This chilling speech had me sobbing on my couch all over again, due to how flawlessly worded and how true it was. He nailed police brutality, that all lives matter mess, cultural appropriation, and the magic that black people have always possessed, all in five minutes. I received multiple requests for a typed version of his speech, and I could hardly wait to do it, given the excitement that it invoked within me. Jesse’s activism is a movement that should definitely not go unnoticed.
The elasticity, resilience, and vivacity that is black culture is not nearly as celebrated as it should be. Award shows like the BET Awards are events that the black community as a whole should be supporting, because whether you like it or not, white Hollywood continues to remind us that we are on our own. As we move forward, breaking barriers and reaching the potential that we have been denied for centuries, we should also continue to have our culture thrive and flourish, something that the BET Awards was intended to accomplish (despite it’s shortcomings) and hopefully will continue to accomplish for years to come.
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