Former NFL star and "Bachelor" stand-in host Emmanuel Acho downplays fears of "cancel culture" and asserts that white men, in general, have not been "held accountable for their actions" throughout American history. And it only gets worse once he start defining what he means by "held accountable."
This clip is from a July 2021 appearance on Jen Hatmaker's "For The Love" podcast.
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JEN HATMAKER: How do we begin to dismantle second-degree racism? [Note: This cut in the video is inherent to the original upload] How do we work together here? Because it's exhausting to be on the receiving end of miicroaggressions all day every day, I can only imagine. I just can only imagine it just feels like, "God, can I just go to bed?" And so how do you see us collectively beginning to tear down those walls?
EMMANUEL ACHO: I'll say to you and everyone listening the same thing I said to Oprah. Denial. Spelled d-e-n-i-a-l. "Don't even know I am lying."
JH: Ah. Well, see, that's hard.
EA: So you can't fix a problem, Jen, that you don't know exists. So how do we fix this issue? Well, first we have to acknowledge the existence of it.
I don't necessarily fault the individual white person. I fault the country. For example, I recently hosted The Bachelor: After The Final Rose. The reason they asked me to host was because the black gentleman, the first black Bachelor, he selected a white woman, Rachel Kirkconnell, who had pictures surface of her on an antebellum plantation party back in college.
I'll be real. I've said it privately, I've said it publicly, I'll say it again. I don't fault Rachel. I fault the country, that Rachel doesn't realize how ignorant and insensitive that was. I fault the sorority, not one individual. There's a construct that she was a part of that was like, "You know what? This isn't a bad idea to go to an antebellum plantation." For those of you all listening, "antebellum" in Latin translates to "before the war." The war in question: the Civil War that freed the slaves, so an antebellum plantation is literally notating a plantation that was in existence before slaves were free, and thus slaves would have been on said plantation.
I fault the country for not holding our white brothers and sisters accountable of their insensitivity. I'm going to pivot to a place that may make some people uncomfortable. Jen, you know we currently live in this quote-unquote "cancel culture. And people are, "Oh my God," they're up in arms. "Cancel culture! How the hell, what's going on?"
We have to understand that we're now just being held accountable, and by we, I really mean white men. Women have been held accountable. There have been women's suffrage movements. 1920s, look no further. Where women have been told how to dress. Women have been told what to say. Women have been held in check if they dress a certain way or say a certain thing.
Black people, we already know they've been held accountable. I dare a black person in the 1940s or '50s to sit on the front of a bus. Held accountable.
So black people have held been held accountable for their actions, women have been held accountable for their actions. But white men have never really been held accountable for their actions in our country, speaking generally, if I may. The issue at hand is that collectively, as a society, we haven't done a good enough job holding each other accountable.
Yesterday, the day before we're currently recording this, marked a hundred years since the Tulsa race riots, the Tulsa race massacre. You're nodding your head in agreement, so I'm assuming you know what I am talking about. I did not know what I was talking about prior to two years ago, because I never learned that at my astute, genius private school. I went to the number one school in Texas. Look it up. Not my opinion. We're literally ranked the number one school in Texas. And I did not know what the Tulsa race riot was.
For those listening who don't know what it is, Tulsa race riot. Black Wall Street eviscerated. Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, because a black man tripped on an elevator, touched a white woman. White woman made accusations, et cetera.
So I bring that all full circle, Jen, to simply say we as a country have to do a better job of understanding the real issues. Even my white people, my white brothers that are trying to be allies, do you know what you're being an ally to and for? You want to be a part of the good, but do you know how? That's really the dilemma at hand.
Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F90lnLjQUIs
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