What a nice, thoughtful gesture by two high-profile celebrities — hopefully we’ll see this from more in the coming days.
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have made a $200,000 donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, admitting their collective “blindness” to racial issues as part of their white privilege in the past. Now this is how you be an ally, people!
Related: Black CNN Reporter Arrested On Air While Covering Minneapolis Protests
The couple — who infamously held their wedding at a former slave plantation in Charleston, South Carolina back in 2012 — also released a statement on social media reflecting on how “ashamed” they are over how “uninformed” they’ve been in the past about sensitive racial issues. As part of that statement, the popular couple vowed to do better by people of color from here on out — a lofty and respectable goal, to be sure.
Sharing an identical statement on both of their Instagram accounts, the Gossip Girl star and her Canadian-born husband of Deadpool fame wrote in part (below):
“We never had to worry about preparing our kids for different rules of law or what might happen if we’re pulled over in the car. We don’t know what it’s like to experience that life day in and day out. We can’t imagine feeling that kind of fear and anger. We’re ashamed that in the past we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is. We’ve been teaching our children differently than the way our parents taught us. We want to educate ourselves about other people’s experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it… especially our own complicity. We talk about our bias, blindness and our own mistakes. We look back and see so many mistakes which have led us to deeply examine who we are and who we want to become. They’ve led us to huge avenues of education.”
Wow! Talk about changing the way they think, and the way they live — no easy feat, but an admirable declaration to make a change!
The couple, share 5-year-old James, 3-year-old Inez, and a third child born in 2019 of whom they still have yet to publicly revel a name.
Their statement continued, referencing those kids and the family’s pledge to be strong allies for racial justice in their lives going forward:
“We’re committed to raising our kids so they never grow up feeding this insane pattern and so they’ll do their best to never inflict pain on another being consciously or unconsciously. It’s the least we can do to honor not just George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, but all the black men and women who have been killed when a camera wasn’t rolling … Mainly, we want to use our privilege and platform to be an ally. And to play a part in easing pain for so many who feel as though this grand experiment is failing them.”
So inspiring!
Very well spoken, and a much-needed gesture considering the contentious climate of the past few days.
Related: NBA Star JR Smith Had A Truly WILD Viral Time At The LA Protests…
Here’s the full post (below):
Love it!
Honestly, we’re glad to see more celebrities stepping up in various ways in response to police brutality and unfair policing in the black community. That’s clearly long been a major societal issue, and it’s about damn time we get to fixing it!!
Reactions, Perezcious readers? Sound OFF about everything here down in the comments (below)…
[Image via WENN/Avalon]
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