Jeffrey Wright Talks Racist Abuse Against Kylian Mbappé

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>“Look at this bullshit. What is she talking about?! I mean, here’s this guy who’s one of the greatest football players in the world. It’s obvious to anyone who’s not a fucking idiot just by watching the man on the field, how significant he is as a player, how significant his contributions are to this game that the world loves. And he’s a human being as well.”

>“**And yet you have to hear this nonsense from this lazy-minded, self-aggrandizing, self-pleasuring people who are trying to derive some sense of self, some degree of power by thinking that they can be disparaging of him. They think they can somehow diminish how powerful he is on the field with their stupidity**. It’s just remarkable.”

>“But the thing is, France won 2-0 yesterday, and this is the key. If who you are is powerful, there’s nothing they can do to stop you.”

>“I’m Black and for me, it’s a political term. It’s not a biological term.” 

Just beautifully, powerfully said, and he pinpointed exactly the reasoning that drives this type of bigotry. It doesn’t matter if someone is more talented, more successful, more intelligent, more beloved, better in every way than you are if you can claim that their race or ethnicity or gender or sexuality makes them fundamentally, inherently inferior to you. A Black man can be indisputably the best player of his generation in the most competitive, popular sport in the world, an athlete known for giving intelligent statements and being fluent in 3 languages, and a racist thinks his Blackness automatically makes him inferior to her and people who look like her. It’s a type of bigotry that exposes the bigot’s weakness and inferiority in every way that matters.

That is why you can tell the most exploited white man in America that he’s superior to Black people / immigrants / trans people etc. and thus is entitled to more than those groups, and those groups are the reason he’s so poorly paid despite working long hours, why he has no upward mobility, and suddenly that white man will turn his ire towards minorities instead of his rich white bosses who exploit him.

At the end of the day, maybe this doesn’t matter that much to Mbappe, who is on track to win the World Cup for a second time and worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but it matters to every marginalized person who has ever had their accomplishments and worth diminished on the basis of their identity. As a POC and an immigrant, I cannot help but root for the French team—indisputably the best that we’ve seen in a long time, and yet routinely diminished for being predominantly Black and children of immigrants. May the best men win indeed, while the racists seethe and whine.

What is wrong with this world cup and the racist comments? Wtf seriously, cant people just shut up?

Excuse me but couldn’t resist, Mbappé dictator will end racism!

https://preview.redd.it/zn5iligggfch1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51c8d9d37dd3430f11fd0ef598e9b768b9bc90f4