About last night: What does Will Smith’s slap heard ‘round the world really mean?
Actor upstaged himself at a shining moment
I watched in horror snippets of the international broadcast of Sunday’s 94th Academy Awards and thought: Chris Rock and Will Smith, two Black men at the top of their game, shouldn’t fight in public. It plays right into a racist trope that African American men are violent and incapable of controlling their emotions. We know this is simply not true, but the slap from Smith broadcast around the world plays into that very unfortunate stereotype. Rock had every right to press charges against Smith for assault, but he didn’t. Good on the comedian, whose crude joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was in poor taste. Still, Smith should know better than to slap anyone — let alone on a live broadcast. And he even upstaged himself — the slap overshadowing his winning his first Oscar — a career-topping achievement hardly anyone is talking about.
- Toriano Porter, tporter@kcstar.com
Pay attention to the news, not this distraction
Chris Rock, an incandescent but sometimes disappointing talent who became a superstar partly by reinforcing lazy stereotypes about Black people, made a patently unfunny crack about Will Smith’s wife’s physical appearance — not fair game. Smith, his spirits likely buoyed by his expected best actor win later that evening, let his toxic machismo take over and decided to put on a show on one of the biggest stages in the world.
Still, that’s all that happened, and this is one time I’m glad social media is reducing the news cycle to about 20 minutes. Now can we get back to things that matter, like a Supreme Court justice’s wife giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists trying to overthrow the federal government?
- Derek Donovan, ddonovan@kcstar.com
Cory Booker showed a better model of behavior
We typically focus on who won at the Oscars. But after last night’s Academy Awards, we’ve become fixated on a moment of failure. I understand Will Smith’s angry impulse to defend his wife after Chris Rock’s bad joke. But it was a surrender to an impulse to lash out. Only a few days before, we were given an example of how that molten anger could have been handled so differently. Imagine how indignant Cory Booker must have felt watching as Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to be nominated to the court, was savaged and smeared by his GOP colleagues during Senate confirmation hearings. Then watch how the Black senator from New Jersey responded, his voice filled with emotion. “You have earned this spot,” Booker said to Jackson, as she wiped tears from her eyes. “You are worthy. You are a great American.”
Booker showed us how to respond to criticism and low blows with strength and grace. In doing so, he pointed us toward our better angels.
- David Tarrant, dtarrant@kcstar.com
What about Chris Rock’s good example?
White America is quick to view the personal, public success of a Black person as singular and quick to attribute the personal, public failure of a Black person to the melanated community at large.
And Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars is one more example of that. It’s why Black folks cringe when something like this happens, because we know that rather than this being attributed to Smith’s indiscretion in that moment, it becomes a discussion about Black men being uncontrollably violent. Mind you, no one is talking about how, while Smith lost it, Rock was completely composed. He’s a Black man, too.
Let this be, instead, an opportunity for all of us to check a tendency to make an entire swath of the population as small as one man’s worst actions.
What could Smith have done differently? How about this: Snatch the mic out of Rock’s hands and let everyone know how beautiful his wife is, and that hair does not define a woman. And he could have added a better punchline to that bad joke, saying: “Yeah, Chris, she would make a heck of a G.I. Jane because she is a hell of a warrior.”
- Mara’ Rose Williams, mdwilliams@kcstar.com
Not the way to settle a dispute
To all of those arguing that Chris Rock deserved it, of course he did. But if we all went around slapping and screaming at everyone who deserved it, well then we’d have … exactly the violent world we live in now, where the lack and loss of self-control is not just accepted but applauded.
- Melinda Henneberger, mhenneberger@kcstar.com
This story was originally published March 28, 2022 at 12:25 PM.
