Jamie Foxx has riled conservatives after making a statement about black superiority during an NAACP awards ceremony.
Jamie Foxx declared that black people are the “most talented people in the world” at the 44th annual NAACP Image Awards, drawing the ire of conservative critics who took offense to what they considered a racist remark.
As the actor accepted the Entertainer of the Year Award during the February 1 ceremony, he praised other luminaries such as Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, saying that he was humbled by the amazing people he shared the stage with.
“Black people are the most talented people in the world. I, it’s, I can’t explain it,” Jamie Foxx said.
“You can’t sit in this room and not watch Gladys Knight sing and go like, <<Golly, what in the world?>>.”
The site NewsBusters, which claims its mission is to expose the media’s bias toward the left, picked up on the comment and writer Noel Sheppard criticized Jamie Foxx for what he lambasted as a “really stupid” remark.
“Can you imagine the heat a white actor would get if he said at a nationally televised awards ceremony, <<White people are the most talented people in the world?>>,” Noel Sheppard wrote.
“Probably be the end of his or her career.”
The site Red Alert Politics, which caters to young conservatives, described the comment as a “backhanded” criticism of “performers of all other races”.
“Foxx shouldn’t ignore other talented actors and singers who may not share his skin color,” wrote Kelsey Osterman.
It was hardly the first time Jamie Foxx had caused this sort of stir.
He took flak for at one point comparing President Barack Obama to Jesus. Some of the jokes he made on a recent Saturday Night Live episode to promote his new film Django Unchained didn’t sit well with some observers, either.
Jamie Foxx said on the comedy show that, in Quentin Tarantino’s latest history-revising revenge-fantasy, he plays a freed slave who kills “all the white people in the movie…How great is that?”.
In interviews after the release of the film, in which he is attempting to rescue his wife from a cruel slave owner played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx said he expected the movie would provoke strong reactions from the black community and he revealed how “every single thing in my life is built around race”.
Jamie Foxx said that black people are “always sensitive” about race and often see everything through a racial prism.
“As a black person it’s always racial,” Jamie Foxx reportedly said, according to the Daily News.
“I don’t necessarily speak it because you can’t,” the actor said.
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