John Legend’s Epic Response To Paparazzo’s ‘Monkey’ Comment
Like you already know by now, John Legend doesn’t stand down when drama presents itself his way. Only last week, the singer had been walking through John F. Kennedy International Airport with wife Chrissy Teigen when a paparazzo asked Teigen a racist question about Legend. The model took to Twitter and wrote:
Paparazzi at JFK just asked me “if we evolved from monkeys, why is John Legend still around?”
https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/822171772229451778
Chrissy Teigen also confirmed John Legend had been standing right next to her when the question was asked.
The singer finally opened up on the racial incident for the first time during an interview with Variety Studio at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. He said:
We were right next to each other and we looked at each other like, ‘Did he really just say that?’ And he really said it. He basically called me a monkey.
John Legend continued:
Black folks have had to deal with being called monkeys for a long time and dehumanization has always been a method of racism and subjugation of black people.
That’s just part of American history and it’s part of the present, apparently. We saw it with the former president, [Barack] Obama.
Whenever people wanted to discount him or discount his wife, they compared them to apes. And we’ve seen that frequently.
Despite the racist comment fired against him, John Legend said the encounter has only made him stronger:
I’m not hurt by someone saying that to me because I’m smarter, I’m stronger. I look down on that person that would say something like that, but it’s a shame that still exists.
https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/822909047800262656
Chrissy Teigen also had this message for Trump’s White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who lied about attendance at the inauguration on Monday.
https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/822945793858502656
