People Have Signed A Petition For Will Smith And Jada Pinkett Smith To Shut Up

Maybe we should actually be asking them to share even more

So apparently America has had enough of Jada and Will Smith airing their dirty laundry in public. Somewhere in between Will’s increasingly pronounced potbelly and Jada’s infidelity, people just snapped.

Launched by Dexter Morales in November 2021, the petition that is entitled “Stop Interviewing Will and Jada Smith”, started off with the objective of getting 11'000 signatories. It quickly reached that target and increased its objective to 25 000 signatories. Today, it has 24 327 signatures, making it one of the most signed petitions ever recorded on Change.org.

The one question I have, like most writers on this platform that are trolled incessantly, is why do people want to censor others? I mean, if you are not interested, or you feel uneasy, or if you are disgusted by what the Smiths have to say, why don’t you turn off your TV, stop reading your magazine or not listen to Red Table Talk for example. Why do you keep on watching and listening to them, shaking your head, and complaining? You have the power to stop any of that if you truly wanted to, so why don’t you?

I looked at some of the comments in the petition. Needless to say, most were aimed at Jada. Some were racist, some were sexist and some were an abhorrent combination of the two. And no, I’m not going to entertain the slightest possibility of sharing any of those racist comments here.

The comments aimed at Jada ranged from:

“Cool now can we make a petition to cancel Jada’s Red Table show?” to

“I can’t stand her or her kids. Do we have to endlessly endure hearing every single weird thing those kids do? Jada? She’s just nasty. Love Will though” to

“I’m signing because I love Will. He deserves better. As for now, I hope that things (sic) better for him but I don’t want to hear Jada tear him down anymore”.

I’m sure you’ve noticed how many of these comments paint Jada as a wayward woman while Will is a poor guy that needs to be protected. It’s a well-known fact that Will has also cheated on Jada, so why is he getting TLC while Jada is being vilified. That’s the patriarchy you hear loud and clear. And guess what? Both men and women are its loyal foot soldiers.

I particularly take offense at the comment indicating that the Red Table Talk Show should be taken away from Jada. I mean, do folks know that she created Red Table Talk — she’s the boss of the whole thing. It’s mainly her friends who are guests on the show. How do you think you can take her show away from her? But, let me not digress.

After a run through the comments, I came to the conclusion that there are several categories of people that don’t like the Smiths.

First, there are the racists. They don’t like the Smiths because first and foremost, they are wealthy Black, talented celebrities and they keep on winning. This category of white folks doesn’t think that Black people should ever be rich. Since they can’t control the fact that Black people will get rich, they prefer to not hear about Will and Jada’s life, as though they didn’t exist.

The second category is white, Black, or brown people who are simply envious of them. These are people that would despise their next-door neighbor if that person happened to have more cash than they did. So just jealous, petty folks. Basically bottom-feeders.

The third category — and these are people that mainly want Jada to stop speaking, are sexist. Now, these can be either male or female, Black, brown, or white. They’d be fine if Will cheated on Jada but they’ll find it morally reprehensible that Jada — a woman and a Black woman at that — cheats on her husband. As hinted above, these people are loyal servants of the patriarchy. They are a walking and breathing double standard.

Up and above all this though, this petition to silence Will and Jada Smith hides a nastier and deeply troubling side of modern-day society. That of people who want anyone who doesn't share their moral values, their lifestyle, and their ways of thinking to simply “shut up”. It’s becoming a really annoying habit. We are no longer capable of listening to each other, of agreeing to disagree, or letting others live their life the way they want.

We immediately want to control them, to shut them down — even if that means blowing them out into oblivion. There is no dialogue anymore. Diplomacy — which was the art of talking, negotiating, and understanding your enemy’s point of view no longer even exists, and with it, organizations like the United Nations are losing their clout and becoming extinct.

I think that Will and Jada should keep sharing. They’ve been together for over 25 years — that’s a lot longer than most couples in Hollywood. The long and short of it is that they’ve made things work.

From my perspective, there is still a lot that the world can learn from them. We shouldn’t be signing petitions for them to STFU, see definition in the Urban dictionary. We should be embracing their transparency about their challenges as a couple, we should be learning to grow like they have grown in their quarter of a century together. It’s not because we don’t like something that we should censor it — it is often in what we dislike or what sits outside our comfort zone that we learn, evolve, and grow the most.

Thank you for reading my perspective.