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Black Twitter Teaches Justin Timberlake a Lesson in the Wake of Jessie Williams' BET Speech
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Old School. Biblically Independent.

Justin Timberlake Done F*cked Up Now

By Brian Richards | Social Media | June 27, 2016

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Whether or not you watched the 2016 BET Awards last night (and if you didn't, it's possibly because you were one of the VERY angry parents who hated that it was being aired on Nickelodeon, where children could possibly see it. You know, for completely non-racist reasons), the second-most talked-about event from the ceremony, right after the tributes to Prince, was Jesse Williams's acceptance speech for the Humanitarian Award. Many people know him for his work on Grey's Anatomy as Dr. Jackson Avery. But many people also know him for work he has done and continues to do outside of acting: He was a teacher before he became an actor and he is now on the board of directors for The Advancement Project, as well as an executive producer for Question Bridge: Black Males and a fiercely outspoken advocate on behalf of the #BlackLivesMatter movement both on and off Twitter. So when he got up onstage to accept his award from BET President Debra Lee, Jesse had a LOT to say. And any fucks he had to give about making anyone feel uncomfortable with his words were completely nonexistent. See for yourself:


Half of the audience was checking for their wigs, which had just been snatched, and the other half of the audience was retrieving their underwear after tossing them in Jesse's direction like boomerangs.

Justin Timberlake, like the rest of us, had seen this speech and wanted to show his appreciation for what Jesse said.

Black Twitter saw this tweet and remembered (as if we could ever forget) that Justin Timberlake praising Jesse for his no-fucks-to-give speech is the same Justin Timberlake who performed with Janet Jackson at Super Bowl 38 back in 2004. The same Justin Timberlake who removed the part of Janet's clothing that was covering her nipple and ended up showing it to the millions of people watching worldwide, causing the term "wardrobe malfunction" to become part of the nation's vocabulary. The same Justin Timberlake who set fire to his Ghetto Pass/Honorary Black card/Invite To The Barbecue and distanced himself as FAR away from Janet Jackson as possible...

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...and left her to take all of the blame for the 'wardrobe malfunction', while he went on to win America's hearts due to his many hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live. And Black Twitter was kind enough to remind him of this.

Justin had his defenders against the people sending him angry tweets, and those defenders were just as logical and open-minded as you'd expect them to be:


And this is where Justin decided to double down and respond to all of the vitriol he was getting, and all that was missing was him giving out Capri-Sun juice boxes and patting everyone on their heads before shooing them all away so he could focus on more important things.

I'm not sure who told Justin that talking to Black people who are pissed off about the mistreatment of Black women and about possible cultural appropriation as if he's Leslie Knope and they're Ann Perkins was a good idea, but that was when even more people stepped up to remind Justin ...

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After several hours of having his ass handed to him on a silver platter with all of the trimmings, Justin came back on Twitter to apologize. Whether it was his wife, Jessica Biel, his publicist(s), or Timbaland who convinced him to do so remains a mystery:

Yup. He really went the "I don't see color" and the #AllLivesMatter route in order to prove his point and win us all back. Not that it worked, but he tried it.


And so ends* another example of yet another poor and unfortunate soul learning what far too many poor and unfortunate souls have learned: Don't fuck with Black Twitter. Just don't. Because it rarely ever ends well for you when you get on their bad side.

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*This hasn't really ended, mind you. Early-morning Twitter has been doing their part to continue dragging Justin just in time for their lunch breaks