In his Thursday appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Terry Crews has apologized for his insensitive Black Lives Matter tweets during the highpoint of the racial movement in 2020.
During the nationwide protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, Crews tweeted some controversial thoughts on the matter, igniting an onslaught of backlash on social media.
“If you are a child of God, you are my brother and sister. I have family of every race, creed, and ideology. We must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn’t morph into #blacklivesbetter,” read one of the tweets.
“Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth,” Crews wrote in another. “Like it or not, we are all in this together.”
Upon receiving the first couple thousand replies, he continued, “Any Black person who calls me a coon or and Uncle Tom for promoting EQUALITY is a Black Supremist [sic], because they have determined who’s Black and who is not.”
While talking with Noah, following the plug of his recent book release
Tough: My Journey to True Power, Crews owned up to his statements and apologized.“I’m going to let you know, I really do want to apologize to anybody who was offended by these tweets, and was hurt deeply,” said the actor at the 19:40 mark. “Because as an example, as an African American man, a Black man here in this country, I did not want to give the perception that we’re supposed to gloss this over and forgive the death of George Floyd. The murder of George Floyd. And I want to apologize to everyone right now who was ever offended, because it hurt.”
While discussing his book, he touched on some points regarding his healing journey, attributing his need for validation as a source for his misguided tweets.
“I just wanted peace. And I guess it goes back to my approval. It goes back to my need for approval, it went back to that,” Crews told Noah. “And again, it was a mistake. It was a mistake to tweet that out
at that time.”However, the 53-year-old actor hints at how his tweets may have gone over many users’ heads. “You can’t have a nuanced conversation on Twitter,” he joked.
Crews ends his commentary on the show with, “The need is for us as a people to actually come together… This is our country. We died and fought, and I’m not giving it away. This is our inheritance.”