Actor Samuel L. Jackson is currently doing the press tour for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight . But while doing a pretty lengthy interview for The Hollywood Reporter , the actor was pretty candid about some current social issues. In particular, the tragic mass shooting that took place in San Bernardino this year, as previously reported by the Inquisitr . Samuel L. has never really been one to mince words and censor himself, and he certainly wasn’t being shy when he said that Muslims have become “the new young black man” in America. In addition to the tragic terrorist attack, the actor was also upset when the terrorists were revealed to be non-white. In short, the actor wishes the killers were just “crazy white dudes.”
Coming from someone like Samuel L. Jackson, that remark won’t raise an eyebrow, but may sound alarming to some, however Jackson does go on to explain his thoughts in detail.
“When that thing happened in France, we were sitting there going, ‘Oh, my God, these terrorists!’ And I can’t even tell you how much that day the thing that happened in San Bernardino — I was in Hawaii — how much I really wanted that to just be another, you know, crazy white dude, and not really some Muslims.”
There are many Americans who understand and agree with his point of view. He is acknowledging the growing Islamophobia that has been spreading, ever since the terrorist attacks in Paris. Because the San Bernardino killers were Muslim, it only adds fuel to the fire of people fearing Muslim-Americans and Muslims in general.
“It’s like: ‘Oh, sh*t. It’s here,’” he says. “‘And it’s here in another kind of way.’ Now, okay, it happened on an Army base and it happened somewhere else. But now? It’s like they have a legitimate reason now to look at your Muslim neighbor, friend, whatever in another way. And they become the new young black men.”
Muslim Americans need to be paying attention to #TamirRice & #BlackLivesMatter -this is the same racial landscape that breeds Islamaphobia.
— Hend Amry (@LibyaLiberty) December 28, 2015
“New young black men” is a direct reference to the terrible onslaught of unarmed black men dying at the hands of police, and goes on to discuss that very topic. Detailing what it was like for soldiers to come back home from Vietnam in the ’60s and not being respected, and said that a lot of these men fell into law enforcement.
“So, consequently, you’ve got people out there who are used to looking at people as ‘the enemy’ ’cause that’s what it was — people were trying to kill them every day,” Jackson says.
Samuel L. Jackson does emphasize that not all cops are like this, but mentions the cops who witness other police officers misusing their authority and doing nothing to stop it, because they have to be mindful of the “blue wall” that they are apart of. He says that a solution to this problem would be someone from the inside doing what they need to do to weed out the bad cops.
The actor has occasionally played golf with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and says the real estate mogul is running on a campaign purely fueled by hate . Jackson says there’s nothing he can do about it, stating that even Trump’s Republican rivals share some of Trump’s sentiments, but just aren’t voicing them as loudly and proudly as Trump is.
“People who don’t have a certain amount of money don’t mean anything to them,” he adds.
#WhitesAgainstTrump because regardless of how many people line up to see him, more of us are disgusted by the hate he is spreading
— Gina (@alifereframed) December 22, 2015
With all of that said, Samuel L. Jackson makes it clear that he is a Democrat and plans to permanently keep it that way, putting his support behind Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
[Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for The Weinstein Co]