Actor Djimon Hounsou is speaking out about a painfully personal experience involving his 10-year-old son being called the N-Word. Hounsou was a guest on SiriusXM’s “The Clay Cane Show” on Tuesday, March 10 and talked about the incident faced by his son, Kenzo Lee Hounsou.
“I went to pick up my son from a soccer game one time, and he says to me that some other kid called him the N-word, and so that’s how early it starts,” said Hounsou. “So he’s wondering, why do you have to call me that word, and what’s so different about me that you have to patronize me like that?”
Hounsou also said that he often wonders when Black children start to get treated like “a second-class citizen.” Then he talked about how the situation was handled.
“I was actually at the game,” he explained. “I said, ‘Which kid?’ So the kid was getting in the car and left. I said, ‘Well, don’t take that personally. Some people just feel insecure, and they just feel like they have to call you some kind of derogative, you know.’ ”
Kenzo’s mother is Kimora Lee Simmons, who was in a relationship with Hounsou for five-and-a-half years before they split in 2012. Simmons also has two daughters with Russell Simmons, whom she was married to from 1998 to 2009.
Simmons — who’s currently married to former and now disgraced Goldman Sachs employee Tim Leissner — talked about the split with Djimon when it happened and how it’s important for her to stay on good terms with her exes.
“Relationships do change throughout the course of your life, and I always think in terms of relationships changing and evolving rather than starting and stopping,” she said in 2012.
“Kids never go away from your life, and if you’ve been married that person probably never goes away either. You never get rid of anyone and they never really get rid of you,” added Simmons. “I try to do everything from the viewpoint of what’s best for my kids.”
At this time, Simmons hasn’t addressed her son being called the N-Word.
Hounsou, meanwhile, stopped by the SiriusXM show to promote his new film “A Quiet Place Part II,” which premieres March 20.
