This week, Jamie Foxx, who had been recovering from a mysterious medical illness for quite some time now, recently posted on his Instagram a meme that said, “They killed this dude name Jesus…What do you think they’ll do to you???! #fakefriends #fakelove.”
After accidentally liking it, the former friend, Jennifer Aniston, screenshots his post while captioning it, “This really makes me sick. I did not “like” this post on purpose or by accident. And more importantly, I want to be clear to my friends and anyone hurt by this showing up in their feeds – I do NOT support any form of antisemitism. And I truly don’t tolerate HATE of any kind. Period.”
It’s the period for me.
What is the most interesting thing about this is that I am not sure why she stated that she did not accidentally like it nor like it on purpose. While I think it is admirable for a Hollywood starlet, no matter how disconnected she is from her former fame, to stand up against antisemitism, J. Hole’s gaffe was more than misinterpreting what someone said, it was an indictment on a culture that she often sees, but clearly does not understand.
Somehow, “they” turned into the Jews when Aniston, who was the only one to bring up the Jews in the first damn place, took the word “they” a bit too literally. Now, to her credit, the biblical story of Jesus does mention a blurb or two about the Jews murdering him, but is there a hashtag for #fakefriends in the bible, or am I tripping? Because I and anyone connected to a reality that’s grounded enough would know who “they” are. There are a couple of layers that are problematic about this exchange: Aniston’s immediate jump into action disciplining and being Jamie’s authority figure, and misinterpretation of a culture via the language that is often one of its greatest forms of media.
Aniston is not known for her salient points on culture, race, or politics, and while I would never make fun of her for having an opinion on any of these things, why now? Why Jamie Foxx? When she and her former Friends castmates decided to host a get-together, I don’t remember her releasing a statement explaining away the line of coke in the background of their picture. There is this incessant need for white people, even in their good intentions, to police the actions of Black people, even with our purest actions. It is an attempt to explain away/deflect from their mistakes while presenting the mistakes of others for scrutiny.
Additionally, many white people think that they can police the specifics of Black language, simply because it uses a white, European language to convey its ideas. There are plenty of tweets that show a non-Black POC using AAVE, and extremely incorrectly, I might add. Black language does not have the luxury of being spoken specifically by our culture to display our sentiments, so we must rely on the only language we know (English) to maintain some sort of connection to our culture. It is extremely tone-deaf to misinterpret someone’s words on such a large scale simply because there are phrases and nuances with which you are unfamiliar. Black people do not sit around all day with white people on the brain (even the kosher ones).
Thinking that you have the right to tell someone what to do is not at all an unhuman thing, but in this case, Jennifer vastly overstepped her bounds. She not only attempted to police Jamie Foxx’s commentary on a personal matter but then chastised him for her apparent misinterpretation and, upon being informed of her mistake, has yet to apologize.
With the exchange of internet ideas, white people are getting a front-row seat into the minds and culture of Black people from a much more intimate purview, which makes them think that they automatically have the right to comment instead of asking questions and let me tell you this, YA DON’T. So many people do not value the specialness of being Black and instead will insert their social mores and principles and use themselves as a barometer for social propriety and how Black people should behave.
Jennifer is no different, in a world where she could’ve asked questions first, and I’m assuming even call him on the phone; we are instead stuck with the irony that Jamie Foxx hashtagged his post “#fakefriends,” because now it really seems like he was talking about the television show the whole time.
