Justin Timberlake Apologizes for ‘Appropriating’ Black Culture with BET Awards Tweets

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Justin Timberlake apologized Sunday night for praising actor Jessie Williams’ pro-Black Lives Matter speech at the 2016 BET Awards after critics accused the pop singer of “appropriating” black culture.

Grey’s Anatomy star Williams used his BET Humanitarian Award acceptance speech to denounce “whiteness,” which the actor accused of taking black culture and profiting from it.

An “inspired” Timberlake sent out a laudatory tweet at Williams to his own 55 million Twitter followers.

But the 35-year-old “Can’t Stop The Feeling” singer quickly found himself on the receiving end of a barrage of criticism on Twitter.

Within minutes, Timberlake was being bombarded with tweets from people accusing him of stealing black culture, all while staying silent on the issues that Black Lives Matter activists support.

Timberlake then made the point that he’s no different than his critics, tweeting, “The more you realize that we are the same, the more we can have a conversation.”

https://twitter.com/jtimberlake/status/747276674073395200

But the backlash only intensified after that tweet.

It wasn’t long before JT was sending out a series of apologetic tweets.

“I forget this forum sometimes … I was truly inspired by @iJesseWilliams speech because I really do feel that we are all one … A human race,” he wrote.

“I feel misunderstood. I responded to a specific tweet that wasn’t meant to be a general response. I shouldn’t have responded anyway …” he continued.

“I apologize to anyone that felt I was out of turn,” he tweeted. I have nothing but LOVE FOR YOU AND ALL OF US –JT”

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson

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