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Donald Glover’s video for “This Is America” has been praised for its eye-opening symbolism of what it means to be Black in an America bent on protecting gun ownership and filled with police brutality. However, some have criticized Glover for his relationship with a non-Black woman and now, he’s answering back.
While speaking to Global Grind promoting the May 25 release, Glover was asked if it was possible to be conscious and represent Blackness while loving someone different from you.
“That’s what love, I think, really is at the end of the day,” Glover says Saturday, May 12. “It’s not even a selflessness but it’s an understanding that I’m making a safe place for you because it’s not safe out there. Somebody’s out to get you … that’s just the nature of being. And I feel like you can totally love somebody and still look out for yourself. But I think the question really is do you see that someone else as a part of you? If you see it’s ‘we’re people together’ or ‘we’re a tribe together, we depend on each other,’ then you are always gonna want the best for them, I think.”
But while the answer was deemed “perfect” by interviewer and blogger Xilla Valentine, commenters were less than satisfied.
“This mother F is not woke,” someone wrote. “He needs to shut up and worry about his non-Black girlfriend and offspring. I don’t care if he is with a person who is not Black, but don’t try to be woke as well.”
“The answer is no, and what he said made no sense,” another offered. “He just talking around the question.”
“It sounds like he doesn’t know why he’s woke and not dating within his race, building family and community in his race, building wealth in his race,” someone else explained. “This is a broader issue of ‘acceptance’ and ‘alienation’ by people of color. Sad situation because you can’t be woke for a cause and canoodle with the historical roots (offsprings) of your ancestor’s oppressors. Makes no sense like his response. Sad.”
