Comedian Jerrod Carmichael opened the 80th Golden Globe Awards with a long, awkward monologue about diversity, telling a series of jokes about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s recent race scandals that elicited a mixture of nervous laughter and stone-cold silence.
After shushing the celebrities gathered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Jerrod Carmichael confessed that he was hosting the Globes because of the color of his skin. “I’m here because I’m black,” he said.
“I won’t say [the HFPA was] a racist organization, but they didn’t have a single black member until George Floyd died, so do with that information what you will,” he later said.
He then launched a long-winded anecdote about his agent’s reaction to his being offered to host the Globes and the salary conversations involved.
Last year, the annual Globes ceremony was canceled following a “scandal” surrounding the HFPA’s lack of black members and its well-known history of allowing voters to accept studio bribes.
The HFPA has since diversified its membership, saying that it is now majority female and ethnic minority.
Carmichael, who is openly gay, is the first black host of the Golden Globes. He starred in his own NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show, which was canceled in 2017 after three seasons.
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