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Jesse Williams brings audience to its feet with powerful speech on racism at BET Awards

By Yvette C. Hammett
"Grey's Anatomy" actor and activist Jesse Williams accepts the Humanitarian Award onstage during the 16th annual BET Awards at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on June 26, 2016. When Williams, the star/executive producer of the documentary "Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement" accepted the award, his emotional speech practically broke the internet. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI
1 of 3 | "Grey's Anatomy" actor and activist Jesse Williams accepts the Humanitarian Award onstage during the 16th annual BET Awards at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on June 26, 2016. When Williams, the star/executive producer of the documentary "Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement" accepted the award, his emotional speech practically broke the internet. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

LOS ANGELES, June 27 (UPI) -- Grey's Anatomy's Jesse Williams brought the BET awards audience to its feet Sunday with a powerful speech on racism.

Williams,star and executive producer of the documentary Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement, in accepting the Humanitarian of the Year award for his work with civil rights, said the it was not his, but belonged to the parents, suffering families, teachers of students in a broken system.

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His speech hit hard on the topic of continuing racial inequalities in America, the Independent reported.

"This is for the real organizers all over our country," the former public school teacher said. "The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the famiilies, the teachers of students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand..."

Williams, an Advancement Project board member who linked arms with Ferguson activists when Michael Brown was killed on its streets in 2014, also paid homage to those he called the unsung heroes, USA Today reported.

"It's kind of basic mathematics, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize," Williams went on. "Now this is also in particular for the black women, in particular, who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you."

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And there was plenty more where that came from.

"Yesterday would've been young Tamir Rice's 14th birthday, so I don't want to hear anymore about how far we've come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it's so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt."

"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. Ghettoising 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. The thing is, just because we're magic, doesn't mean we're not real."

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