John Legend confirmed having been compared to a monkey last week, during an interview at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah over the weekend. An account of the incident was originally tweeted by his wife Chrissy Teigen on Thursday. [Jan. 19]. According to Teigen, the couple was exiting JFK airport in New York City when a member of the paparazzi began yelling racist and anti-Semitic jokes. She expressed being taken aback when the man asked how someone like Legend can still be around if it is true that humans have already evolved from monkeys.
"He basically called me a monkey. And uh, you know, Black folks have had to deal with being called monkeys for a long time. And dehumanization has always been [the] kind of a method of racism and subjugation of Black people. And that's just part of, you know, American history, and it's part of the present apparently," Legend said in hindsight of the incident. He recalled being startled as he and Teigen looked into one another's eyes to validate what they were being told.
Legend elaborated on how he's had to get used to the remark as something so typical that even former President of the United States, Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle were forced to deal with it. He no longer takes it personal he says. "You know, I'm not hurt by someone saying that to me because I'm smarter, I'm stronger. I look down [at] that person that would say something like that. But, it's a shame that that still exists."
Source: instagram.com
