When it comes to Justin Timberlake's music, there are a lot of people out there who compare him to a modern-day Elvis Presley when it comes to appropriating black culture. And during Jesse Williams' speech at Sunday night's BET Awards, the actor made mention of those people who profit off black culture.
“We’re 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 … 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’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real,” Williams said.
And then came what some call irony when Timberlake praised Williams' speech on Twitter.
That was quickly followed by the s—t storm of people side-eyeing Timberlake, saying that they thought he was the epitome of what Williams had referenced:
Timberlake did respond to one person who asked if he was planning to stop appropriating black culture:
Maybe someone should inform Timberlake that a person who steals from a culture is not the same as the one who created it. But of course, culture vultures wouldn't understand something they directly benefit from. I mean, why would they?