Tyler Perry urged people to “refuse hate” in a powerful speech at the Academy Awards on Sunday, April 25, 2021.
The Madea filmmaker was honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and reflected on his own humble upbringing and days living out of a car as he insisted he only wants to do his best to help others.
He said: “When I set out to help someone, I’m not trying to do anything other than meet somebody at their humanity.”
Perry recalled how, around 17 years ago, he was “stopped cold” when a homeless woman asked if he had any extra shoes he could help her out with.
He said: “It stopped me cold because I remember being homeless, and I had one pair of shoes, they were bent over at the heels. So I was like, ‘Yeah’. ”
He told how he took her to the film’s wardrobe department and the woman was overwhelmed.
He said: “The whole time, she’s finally looking down. She finally looks up, and she has tears in her eyes.
“She said, ‘Thank you, Jesus. My feet are off the ground.’
“In that moment, I just recall her saying to me, ‘I thought you would hate me for asking.’ I go, ‘How can I hate you when I used to be you? How can I hate you when I had a mother who grew up in the Jim Crow South in Louisiana?'”
The 51-year-old filmmaker then discussed his mother’s difficult life and how she had raised him to “refuse hate and blanket judgment.”
He compared her lessons to the modern digital age and how it affects people.
He emotionally said: “In this time, with all of the internet and social media and algorithms that want us to think a certain way, the 24-hour news cycle, it’s my hope that we teach our kids [to] refuse hate. Don’t hate anybody.”
Perry then issued a rallying cry and dedicated the honor to those who would join him in “refusing hate.”
He said: “I refuse to hate someone because they’re Mexican or because they are Black or White or LGBTQ. I refuse to hate someone because they’re a police officer or because they’re Asian. I would hope we would refuse hate.
“And I want to take this humanitarian award and dedicate it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle. Because that’s where healing, where conversation, where change happens. It happens in the middle. Anyone who wants to meet me in the middle to refuse hate and blanket judgment, this one is for you, too.”
Viola Davis had presented Perry with the award, and in her introduction, she praised him for reaching out to help those who were in the position he had once found himself.
She said: “My great friend, filmmaker and philanthropist, Tyler Perry, personifies empathy.
“Tyler knows what it is to be hungry, to be without a home, to feel unsafe and uncertain. So when he buys groceries for 1,000 of his neighbors, supports a women’s shelter or quietly pays tuition for a hard-working student, Tyler is coming from a place of shared experience.”
Watch Perry’s acceptance speech in its entirety on the next page.
