CNN host Don Lemon pressed actor Terry Crews on comments he made about the Black Lives Matter movement Monday.
Using Crews’ controversial tweet that “we must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn’t morph into ”#blacklivesbetter” as a jumping-off point, Lemon told the “America’s Got Talent” host that he “stepped in it.”
Crews defended his statement as a warning of the movement’s “extremes.” He accused “militant-type forces” in BLM of making severe threats if demands aren’t met and said other Black people “who are talking about working with other whites and other races ― they’re being viewed as sellouts or being called Uncle Toms.”
Crews said a “dangerous self-righteousness” was developing in BLM that viewed its followers as “better.” It’s “almost a supremist move,” he added, as if “their Black lives mattered a lot more than mine.”
Lemon reminded Crews that the late civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. was considered extreme in his day and that it’s easy to paint BLM as extremists.
Crews sidetracked into “Black-on-Black” violence and the recent rash of shootings.
“What does that have to do with equality, Terry?” Lemon fired back.
“Black people need to hold Black people accountable,” Crews said.
Lemon reminded Crews that BLM was not “all-encompassing.”
“Black Lives Matter is about police brutality and injustice … not about what’s happening in Black neighborhoods,” Lemon explained.
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