Actor and game show host Terry Crews has faced criticism over assumptions about his wife’s race. He clarified that his wife, Rebecca King-Crews, is biracial and was raised by a Black woman, despite having fair skin. The two have been married for nearly three decades.
During his interview on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast, Crews shared that even after 40 years of being with his missus, people still approached him about her racial identity and he always has to convince people that she is a sista.
“She’s Black, yes, Black momma … white daddy and been raised like that, but again, just cause she don’t have that kind of look, her momma is Black,” the Friday After Next star said.
He also highlighted that his wife was from a predominately Black city.
“She’s from Gary, Indiana, bruh. My wife was Miss Gary, Indiana 1984. And Gary, Indiana, is like Flint,” Crews continued. “Ain’t nothing but Black people. And she was raised in Black culture, so it wasn’t like she was raised in the outskirts.”
Even though Rebecca grew up in Gary, she did not meet Crews until his sophomore year at Western Michigan, where she served as a music minister at a church near his school. They tied the knot in 1989, three years before he entered the NFL.
Following Terry’s professional football career from 1991 to 1997, he transitioned into acting.
In 2010, the world got to know his wife and family (five children and later their one grandchild) when they appeared in a reality series titled “The Family Crews.”
Many on social media commented on his need to clarify his wife’s race.
“Why [does] it matter the race of his wife who cares if she’s white/black,” one X user asked.
Why’s it matter the race of his wife who cares if she’s white/black
— dustyjohnson2 (@dustyjohns6581) March 6, 2024
“Knowing that his wife is biracial actually makes all that smoke Terry Crews had for Black women on here a couple years ago look even worse,” one other social media user posted.
Knowing that his wife is biracial actually makes all that smoke Terry Crews had for Black women on here a couple years ago look even worse. pic.twitter.com/HOamM1kWEe
— BlacKanSeyKo (@BlackXtian) March 7, 2024
Crews came under fire in 2020 when critics claimed he dismissed Gabrielle Union’s claims of racism on the show “America’s Got Talent” when she served as a co-host. Crews in fact said in a January 2020 interview on the “Today” show that the allegations of racism on “AGT” were made anonymously, not by Union — at that point the claims were from a Variety story citing an unnamed source — so he could say only that his experience as an “AGT” co-host had been positive.
Many pointed to this to claim he has an issue with Black women. In the interview with Sharpe, he also addressed how he apologized to Union and her husband, Dwyane Wade. His wife was there also to help mend the wound.
Fans acknowledged that King-Crew might have been raised with Black people but wondered what that really meant.
“Wait so is she black or naw…. Cuz ‘being raised in black culture’ don’t automatically make you black. Ask Rachel … Like what?!” another comment read.
“I’m not sure why he said it like this cause she actually is mixed,” said one person who posted pictures of the Crews couple when they were young.
I’m not sure why he said it like this cause she actually is mixed pic.twitter.com/xTTBSwdJRR
— Juju (@JuJuBreauxD) March 6, 2024
Pictures of King Crews, pulled from her social media, from her childhood show that she is as Black as many families in America.
The 58-year-old was born to Anna King Lund and Samuel Dean King, a mixed-race couple who married in 1965, two years before the historic Loving v. Virginia decision, a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The world has changed drastically over the last 60-plus years when it comes to marrying people outside of one’s race. In 1967, when the Loving ruling came down, only 3 percent of the marriages in the nation were interracial. The rate has increased to 17 percent of newlyweds in modern times.
Moreover, in 1958, Gallup asked Americans if they approved of interracial couples. Only 4 percent of those sampled agreed. In 2022, the same question was asked by the survey and the approval of interracial marriage in the U.S. has reached a new peak of 94 percent.
Even with such a high approval rating, many people have issues with race and marriage.
During the interview, Sharpe pressed the actor about how he managed all of the discrimination his family had faced from closed-minded people bent on misidentifying her race. Crews said it is just something that they have gotten used to after all of these years.
Crews said, “This is what I admire about her. It never bothered her.”
“She was like, ‘I love Black people, and even if some feel that I’m white, I understand it.’ … Wow, and it’s deep to me,” he said.
“That’s the way I had to start thinking, because I would always get angry,” he added. “But to watch her, the way she dealt with things peacefully, like ‘I’m not gonna go there. You know what? That’s trauma that they had to deal with, and I understand it. But I love them anyway.'”
