MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross on the Oscars Slap: ‘Utterly Ridiculous To Center This Conversation in the Opinions of White Folks’

EXCERPT:

CROSS: “If we went to a white person’s home and it was their family dinner, and we were sitting there at the table, and the mother hauled off and slapped the father and everybody at that table has an opinion, the sister is like, ‘mom, you always do this,’ and the brother is, like, ‘I can’t believe you guys are doing this.’ And dad is like, ‘you’re terrible.’ If I weigh in as the guest in this home and I say, yeah, you guys are terrible. Everybody is like ‘I’m sorry, when did you get an opinion? This is our family table.’ That’s what this moment felt like for many of us. And there’s a nuance to what happened that we should get into. Michael, I personally believe this was a moment that we saw Will Smith behave like a bully. I know a lot of people have strong opinions about this. I thought the slap itself was completely uncalled for and I want to be really clear while we’re talking about family talk, I think it is utterly ridiculous to center this conversation in the opinions of white folks. This is just about what happened there. The jumping-off point should not be, oh, but what might the white people think about it. It’s just this moment between those two men. I thought it was uncalled for.”