On June 26, actor and activist Jesse Williams was honored with the Humanitarian Award at the 2016 BET Awards. It was there where he gave a power, inspiring speech about the causes that he works tirelessly on. Following his speech, there have been both praises and criticism on social media, as well as others across the board. Someone has even gone as far to create a petition on Change.org (really?) to get him fired from "Grey’s Anatomy." But before I get into the story, here’s a quick background story on Jesse Williams.

Jesse Williams was born on August 5, 1981 in Chicago, Illinois and is the oldest of three boys. He obtained his degree at Temple University and double-majored in African American Studies and Film and Media Arts. From there he taught in the Philadelphia public school system at the high school level for six years. After moving to New York, Jesse began to study acting and was chosen to participate in the New York Actors Showcase in 2006. He was one of 14 finalists out of the 800 who auditioned and had his film debut in the sequel to the film, “The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants” in 2008. By 2009, he had a recurring role in the ABC hit series "Grey’s Anatomy." By 2010 the show had announced that Jesse would be a series regular as Dr. Jackson Avery. In 2012, he created farWord Inc. which is a production company that focuses on education, literature, transmedia, TV and film. He’s also the youngest member of The Advancement Project’s board of directors, which serves as a civil rights think tank and advocacy group, and an Executive Producer to Question Bridge: Black Males. The multi-faced media project, art exhibition, student and teacher curriculum site targets black male identity and diversity that falls within that demographic. Jesse has also contributed articles to both CNN and The Huffington Post. In 2012 he married his longtime girlfriend, Aryn Drake-Lee who is a successful real-estate broker with a degree from Barnard College, the sister school to Columbia University. This past May, he directed and released a documentary called “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.”

Now that you have a little more insight as to who Jesse Williams is, we can get to the subject at hand. During his speech at the 2016 BET Awards, he discussed police brutality against African Americans along with tackling cultural appropriation by saying that “we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil — black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.”

When touching on the subject of police brutality, he had made mention of June 25 being what would’ve been the 14th birthday of Tamir Rice, a young boy who was killed in Cleveland after police officers alleged that he had a gun (it was a toy) back in 2014. “I don’t want to hear any more about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on 12-year-old playing alone in the park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better than it is to live in 2012 than it is to live in 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Dorian Hunt.”

Despite what Jesse spoke on, his speech was met with both positivity and criticism. Many praised him for using his platform to speak on what doesn’t necessarily reaches the masses. Others criticized him for being racist. (The politically correct term is prejudice, but that’s not my point.) Even controversial actress Stacey Dash called him a “Hollywood plantation slave” (yeah, that happened). But one of the most baffling points had to have been where fellow POC (people of color) had accused Jesse of not really knowing what the black experience is like due to the color of his skin (cues heavy sigh and eye roll). And to be quite honest, if you’re more concerned with Jesse being a black man of mixed race rather than what he was actually speaking on, then you missed the entire point of what he was saying.

One thing to remember is that black comes in all different shades and sizes, not to mention that some of the many who are unapologetically black (Malcolm X, Prince, Bob Marley, Angela Davis, Nikki Giovanni, Shaun King, etc.) had lighter skin. In fact, this is a direct result of the Willie Lynch speech of 1712. Willie Lynch was a slave master who was living in the West Indies and was invited to speak to those in Virginia about his methods.

With that being explained, Jesse’s complexion does NOT take away from his blackness, just like it doesn’t to anyone else (except for Rachel Dolezal, she needs help). Yes, it’s true that he’s not the first black actor to speak on this. However, the fact that he chose to speak on it at an award show that gets millions of views each year, knowing the guarantee of being ridiculed, takes a lot of heart. No matter how many have spoken before him, it's always great to have another voice that sheds light on something that is almost always ignored. Especially since we live in a generation where the attention span of many is about the same as a goldfish.

In short, I hope that those that are inspired by Jesse’s speech take action in your own communities, as well as taking the initiative to educate yourself on things that may be unclear to you. Because as Jesse said, “the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That’s not our job, alright — stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression.”

Remember, just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real.