It’s been an, uh, eventful couple of weeks for Terry Crews, due to the discussions surrounding the future of wacky cop comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine and his “Black supremacy” tweet (not to mention his belated apology to Gabrielle Union). “Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth. Like it or not, we are all in this together,” Crews tweeted on Sunday, causing an immediate backlash. His follow-up comments didn’t help, either. On Monday’s episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, the John Henry star was asked about his comments. Here’s what he said:
“One of the big things that I tweeted was the fact that I felt, you know, defeating white supremacy without the help of white people could create a black supremacy. Now, the term ‘black supremacy’ was just destroyed. What I was trying to say is that I, as a member of the black community, there have been so-called ‘gatekeepers’ who decide who’s black and who’s not. And in this effort to really push equality and to end white supremacy and systematic racism, there are certain black people who have determined that what I’m doing has no bearing. I have been rendered moot because I am successful. And my point is just the fact that we need all of us.”
He also compared the situation to women’s rights, where “women’s rights without men, nothing changes. If men don’t understand how to treat women, we’re going to have a problem. And it’s the same thing with white people. If white people don’t understand how to treat us as a community, we’re going to have a problem. But, also, in our own community, we have to know how to treat each other. And we have to allow ourselves to agree, to disagree, to have different viewpoints.”
Crews also discussed the future of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, as he recently did with us.
“We actually all got on a Zoom call just the other day because of what’s happening in this country. We were witnessing so many abuses of power. We had some somber talks and some really eye-opening conversation about how to handle this new season.”
You can watch the interview above.