Empire starlet Taraji P. Henson said during a White House occasion that calling black women “strong” is dehumanizing, and “we need to take apart that idea.”
“Don’t call me strong. It dehumanizes me,” the starlet said.
“I think it’s a double whammy for black females, since we are considered as being so strong– we’ve driven that narrative for so long, because we required that,” Henson said. “We’re the bottom of the totem pole, no regard, not secured.
“So we needed some sort of armor, however then we discover ourselves in a pickle,” she continued. “We’re so strong, that that’s why pass away in these emergency clinic, since that’s the idea: we can take it.”
Henson went on to state that tennis star “Serena Williams shared her distressing story, and she’s, you understand, a substantial, everybody knows her. You would believe the seriousness to conserve her, right? However they see her as just this strong female.”
Taraji P. Henson shows up for the Los Angeles Unique Screening of Netflix’s” The Harder They Fall “in Los Angeles, October 13, 2021. (Image by Chris Delmas/ AFP by means of Getty Images)”And that’s another thing, here we are with this mental health piece, and we have to destigmatize that,” the Karate Kid actress said. “Do not call me strong. It dehumanizes me. It makes me seem like my sensations do not matter, [that] I don’t require to stop briefly to require time for my psychological, due to the fact that I’m a strong, black lady.”
“So we require to dismantle that idea, because like I said, it makes us super-human in a way,” she included. “And permitting yourself to be because space is taking care of your mental. If you’ve got the tools, if you have the expert aid you need, you will not remain in that space for long.”
In 2020, in the wake of the nationwide rots over the death of George Floyd, Henson was amongst the Hollywood celebrities who signed a letter pushing to defund all police departments.
A year earlier, the actress pleaded for then-presidential prospect Joe Biden to “save us” in 2020.
That same year, Henson and a couple of other of her Empire co-stars wrote a lengthy letter to Fox TV/Disney executives pleading for their so-called “innocent” and “honest” fellow co-star– hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett– to be restored on the show.
In 2015, Henson said sorry to police in the Southern California city of Glendale for accusing an officer of racially profiling her boy, after cops determined that her story was incorrect.
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