Actor and singer Tyrese Gibson caused a fast and furious uproar on social media this week when, during an interview with civil rights attorney Ben Crump posted on X, he complained that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “signed an Asian hate crime bill” during the Covid-19 pandemic that “protects Asians at all costs” while claiming they’ve done little to protect Black and brown people from hate crimes.
“What you’re doing is, President Biden and Kamala Harris, you’re saying that Black and brown people will continue to be disposable,” Gibson said, while Crump seemed to nod approvingly.
Millions of people have responded online to the outspoken entertainer’s assertions, some to echo his concerns and anger and others to call him out for getting his facts wrong.
“It’s important that we respect Tyrese and his right to speak, but it’s also important that we hold Tyrese accountable for the rant he just went on, which makes no sense and simply is filled with factual inaccuracies,” said Marc Lamont Hill, professor of urban education at City University of New York Graduate Center.
“He says that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris signed an Asian hate crime bill and ignores Blacks and Latinos. It’s just not true,” Hill continued. “There’s already hate crime legislation on the books … that go back to the ’60s. Obama also passed one, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act [in 2009].
“Then President Biden, the very person he said didn’t do something, signed the Emmett Till Anti- Lynching bill into law in 2022. That’s following more than a 100 years and 200 failed attempts by lawmakers, finally making it a federal hate crime. So, to be clear, you can say that we haven’t done a good job of protecting Black folk from state violence and white supremacist violence … but what you can’t say is that there is…
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