Tipsheet

BET Founder Explains Why African Americans Are Laughing at White People

BET Founder Robert Johnson mocked the cancel culture mob for taking down statues, getting television shows removed, and have professors fired, thinking that’s what African Americans want.

People who are knocking down statues "have the mistaken assumption that black people are sitting around cheering for them saying 'Oh, my God, look at these white people. They're doing something so important to us. They're taking down the statue of a Civil War general who fought for the South," Johnson told Fox News. "You know, black people, in my opinion, black people laugh at white people who do this the same way we laugh at white people who say we got to take off the TV shows."

Referring to these people as “borderline anarchists,” Johnson said their actions will do nothing to “give a kid whose parents can't afford college money to go to college. It's not going to close the labor gap between what white workers are paid and what black workers are paid. And it's not going to take people off welfare or food stamps.”

Johnson rejected the backlash against public figures who say "all lives matter" instead of "black lives matter," and the cancel craze targeting TV shows like "Dukes of Hazzard" and movie classics such as "Gone with the Wind."

He also mocked white celebrities for what he described as apologizing for their race in emotional social media speeches.

"You know, that to me is the silliest expression of white privilege that exists in this country. The notion that a celebrity could get on a Twitter feed and say, 'oh, my God, I am so sorry that I am white.’ I don't find any black people getting on Twitter and saying, 'Oh, I'm so sorry I'm black.' And we got the worst problems. ... My thing is: embrace being white and do the right thing." (Fox News)

Johnson went on to call the cancel culture's actions "tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on a racial Titanic."

"It absolutely means nothing," he said.

"White Americans seem to think that if they just do sort of emotionally or drastic things that black people are going to say, ‘Oh my God, white people love us because they took down a statue of Stonewall Jackson.’ Frankly, black people don’t give a damn," Johnson added.

In 2001, the BET founder became the country's first black billionaire.