On Will Smith and The Recognition of Humanity

So…The Oscars were certainly eventful and by now I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. The slap heard across the world — Will Smith smacks Chris Rock after a joke gone awry. While I wish that Will had chosen to respond differently in the moment, understand that I’m not here to argue about the right or wrong of the situation. Frankly, there has been enough of that. Rather, this situation got me thinking about our willingness to write someone off for one moment of bad behavior.

A bad moment doesn’t maketh a bad person.

Denzel Washington along with Tyler Perry, and then Bradley Cooper all approached Will in the aftermath of his transgression. They all seemed to want to do one thing — check-in on their brother and friend. This, to me, seemed indicative of their awareness that Will wasn’t quite himself on Sunday night. In watching all of this go down, I couldn’t help but be a bit dismayed by the commentary being made during the aftermath. The reason being that there was little to no critical examination offered on Will Smith’s very out of character display.

Will Smith has been in the industry for decades, and has essentially been the pillar of perfection since the start of his career. So when he acted outside of his character on Sunday night, I immediately began to wonder what was happening for him internally in that moment. After all, Will Smith is not THAT guy. He is not habitually violent and is known as one of the nicer people in Hollywood. So what was happening in order for him to react in such an explosive manner?

We’ll probably never have an exact answer to that question but what I did think about was Will’s 2021 memoir entitled Will, where he wrote at length about the domestic violence he witnessed as a child and how the “character” of Will Smith, who’s loud and boisterous, was born out of his inability to protect the people he loved at that time and to hide his cowardice.

On Sunday night I saw that little boy.

Now, I’m not excusing Will’s actions. But we leave very little room for people to make mistakes, and in order to recognize the fullness of one’s humanity, we have to accept that people fuck up. We hold each other to this impossible standard and the moment that we’re less than perfect then it’s like throw the whole person away. Even more so if you are a person of color (read. it’s very telling that people seem to want to make an example of Will Smith when the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences has let several predators coast on by without so much as a slap on the wrist but iDigress).

All that to say, I want us to challenge ourselves to approach this situation with less judgement and more grace. What would it cost you to hold space for compassion? And that doesn’t mean you don’t hold people accountable. That doesn’t mean absolution for the “wrongdoer.” That doesn’t mean you don’t disavow violence. It just means that there is no such thing as a perfect person. None of us are exempt from making mistakes or acting against our better judgement. We mess up, gain the awareness, learn the lessons, and do our best to move forward with new knowledge.

That is what being human looks like.