“Grey’s Anatomy” star Jesse Williams is now the subject of two petitions after he accepted a BET Award last week with a searing speech telling Black Lives Matter critics to “sit down.”
The Change.org petition demands that the actor, who has played Dr. Jackson Avery on the ABC medical drama for seven seasons, be fired for having “spewed racist hate speech against law enforcement and white people at the BET awards” on June 26. It has nearly 5,000 signatures.
The second, which has almost 20,000 supporters, demands that the network “support this brave leader, not just by not firing him or in any way diminishing his role, but by openly standing with him and speaking against hate in any form.”
But “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shondra Rhimes dismissed both petitions as unnecessary, expressing her support for the actor by tweeting on July 4, “Um, people? Boo don’t need a petition #shondalandrules.”
Um, people? Boo don’t need a petition. #shondalandrules
— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) July 5, 2016
Critiquing what he described as discriminatory treatment of blacks by the police, Williams said upon accepting the BET Humanitarian Award on June 26 that “if you have a critique for the resistance — for our resistance — then you’d better have an established record of critique of our oppression … If you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.”
