Jada Pinkett Smith has finally responded to the comments made by former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Janet Hubert regarding the Smith’s Oscar boycott.
After Jada Pinkett Smith’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day announcement that she will be boycotting the Oscars due to the lack of diversity, Hubert posted a video on Facebook, calling Jada’s actions “suspect.”
“I find it ironic that somebody who has made their living, and made millions and millions of dollars from the very people you’re talking about boycotting just because you didn’t get a nomination, just because you didn’t win,” Hubert, who played Aunt Vivian on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, said. “That is not the way life works, baby.”
Now, Jada Pinkett Smith is addressing the comments. Jada Pinkett Smith began by calling out the KKK’s recent recruitment efforts during the MLK holiday weekend. “Considering that Alabama had its highest recruitment for the KKK for Martin Luther King’s birthday, I hope that we as African-Americans can find a way to get along and step together,” Smith says.
According to the New York Daily News, a Ku Klux Klan chapter distributed recruitment flyers to residents in Mobile, Alabama, over the MLK holiday weekend.
“This whole Oscar controversy isn’t really about the Oscars,” she adds. “Really, in my plea to ask all communities and people of color to take back our power is so that we can use it in all sectors of our community, and right now, specifically with African-American people, we have some very serious issues that I think we as a people have to move together on. I’m hoping we can find ways to step together in this instead of finding ways to fight each other. I got love for everybody.”
Jada Pinkett Smith’s initial call for a boycott forced the President of The Academy to respond.
“This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes,” Isaacs, the Academy’s first black president, said in a statement. “The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.”
