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…hitting the big screen with his first movie role in The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants 2. Williams would go on to act in other films including the high-grossing The Butler. But currently, Williams is most famous for his role in the hugely popular, Grey’s Anatomy. And with this fame, Jesse Williams has a platform for activism.

It seems like for the past three years, the media has broadcast story after story of unarmed African Americans losing their life to “law enforcement” : so often that it has become a trend in the media (we all know it’s always been happening, but now it’s all over the television, newspapers, and blogs). Of course after hearing about such stories, Williams couldn’t sit idle. The Trayvon Martin case of 2012, in which an un-armed Martin, 17, was shot to death by George Zimmerman, didn’t actually involve a police officer, but it involved Zimmerman taking the “law” into his own hands (even when advised not to do so by the actual police). Jesse Willliams explained, “I hope the Trayvon case will not go in the way of a short term catalyst. I think that it needs to be contextualized. Trayvon is one of several. There’s Oscar Grant. There’s Jordan Davis. There’s a lot of young black men getting gunned down because people felt that they were threatened – unarmed boys who were supposedly threats because being a black man is “actually” some kind of aggression within itself.”

Live on CNN, Jesse Williams revealed his frustration with how the media portrayed the unarmed Michael Brown, 18, shot to death by “police officer” Daren Wilson in 2014. “I’ve never seen a white body left in the street for four hours in the sweltering heat. The cop doesn’t call in the shooting. The body isn’t put in an ambulance. It’s shuttled away in some shady, unmarked SUV. There is a lot of bizarre  behavior going on, and that is the story. That’s where we need journalism. That’s where we need that element of our society to kick in to gear and not just play a loop of what the kid may have done in a convenience store…This idea that because he stole a handful of cheap cigars, what’s that worth five bucks? I’ve lived in the white suburbs of this country for a long time. I know plenty of white kids who steal stuff from the convenience store. This idea that every time a black person does something, they automatically become a thug worthy of their own death. We don’t own drug crimes. We’re not the only ones who sell and do drugs all the time. We’re not the only ones who steal. We’re not the only ones who talk crazy to cops. There’s a complete double standard and different experience that a certain element of this country has the privelage of. They’re treated like human beings. And others aren’t.” In October of the same year, Williams joined thousands in Ferguson, Missouri to protest the shooting of Michael Brown.

Williams has used his Twitter platform, in which he has over one million followers, to discuss social injustices. Most recently he has tweeted about the Sandra Bland case, in which Bland was unlawfully jailed, only to be…

Jesse Williams: Much More Than An Actor  was originally published on blackdoctor.org

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