Source: ABC
Watch Tyler Perry give an incredibly powerful and moving speech about refusing to hate and judge people due to the color of their skin and/or their lot in life.
TRANSCRIPT:
Viola Davis:
Tyler I know you never do what you do for thanks. But I'm grateful for the countless ways you work to make ours a better world. It is my honor to present to you the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award
Tyler Perry:
That is incredibly kind. Thank you so much. They only gave me a few minutes. So I want to say a very special thanks to Miss Viola Davis, who is nominated tonight and doing this. Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate it. To the Board of Governors, especially to Whoopi Goldberg, Ava.
You know, when I set out to help someone, it is my intention to do just that. I'm not trying to do anything other than meet somebody at their humanity. Case in point, this one time I remember – maybe it's about 17 years ago. I rented this building and we were using it for production. And I was walking to my car one day and I see this woman coming up out of the corner of my eye and I say: “She's homeless. Let me give her some money.” Judgment! I wish I had time to talk about judgment.
Anyway, I reach in my pocket and I'm about to give her the money. And she says: “Excuse me sir. Do you have any shoes?” It stopped me cold because I remember being homeless and having one pair of shoes. And they were bent over at the heal. So it's like yeah.
So I took it into into the studio. She was hesitant to go in, but we went in. We go to wardrobe and they're all these boxes and everything around the walls and fabrics and racks of clothes. So, we ended up having to stand in the middle of the floor. So, as we're standing there wardrobe, we find some shoes. We help put them on. I stand up. I'm waiting for it to look up. And all this time. She's looking down. She finally looks up. She's got tears in her eyes. She said, “Thank You, Jesus. My feet are off the ground.”
In that moment, I just I recall her saying to me, “I thought you would hate me for asking.”
I'm like, “How can I hate you when I used to be you?”
How can I hate you when I had a mother who grew up in a Jim Crow South, in Louisiana, rural Louisiana, right across the border from Mississippi – who at 9 or 10 years old, was grieving the death of Emmett Till. As she got a little bit older, she was grieving the death of the Civil Rights boys, and the little girls who were in the bombing in Alabama. She grieved all this, all these years.
And I remember being a little boy and coming home, and she was at home. And it was like: “What are you doing home? You supposed to be at work?” She was in tears that day. She said there was a bomb threat. And she couldn't believe that someone wanted to blow up this place where she worked, where she took care of all these toddlers. It was the Jewish Community Center. My mother taught me to refuse hate. She taught me to refuse blanket judgment.
And in this time with all of the internet and social media and algorithms and everything that wants us to think a certain way, the 24-hour news cycle, it is my hope that all of us would teach our kids and I want them to remember: just refuse hate. Don't hate anybody.
I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican, or because they are black, or white, or LBGTQ. I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian. I would hope that we would refuse hate.
And I want to take this Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award and dedicated it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what's around the wall? Stand in the middle because that's where healing happens.That's where conversation happens. That's where change happens. It happens in the middle. So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment, and to help lift someone's feet off the ground, this one is for you to.
God bless you. And thank you Academy. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Words spoken
from the heart
alight
in the hearts
of others.
Tyler, you are my brother.