Morgan Freeman has said commonly used terms relating to race should be taken out of the lexicon. In an interview with the Sunday Times, the actor said he was keen to \u201csay publicly\u201d that he objected to the terms \u201cBlack History Month\u201d and \u201cAfrican American\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calling both an \u201cinsult\u201d, Freeman said of the first: \u201cYou\u2019re going to relegate my history to a month?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Freeman said he objected to \u201cAfrican American\u201d because it was inaccurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t subscribe to that title. Black people have had different titles all the way back to the N-word and I do not know how these things get such a grip, but everyone uses \u2018African American\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat does it really mean? Most Black people in this part of the world are mongrels. And you say Africa as if it\u2019s a country when it\u2019s a continent, like Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The actor had previously spoken out against both terms to the Guardian in 2012, saying he didn\u2019t like \u201cAfrican American\u201d \u201cbecause \u2018Black\u2019 is<\/em> beautiful. One syllable versus seven\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Black History Month, he said he objected to the ghettoisation implicit in devoting February to this topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBlack history is<\/em> American history; they\u2019re completely intertwined.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked by the Times whether he concurred with Denzel Washington\u2019s statement that he was \u201cvery proud to be Black, but Black is not all I am.\u201d Freeman said: \u201cYes, exactly. I\u2019m in total agreement. You can\u2019t define me that way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now 85, Freeman also reflected on his career, voicing some regret about the lack of range it had spanned in recent years. \u201cWhen my career started in film I wanted to be a chameleon,\u201d he said. \u201cI remember De Niro early on doing very different parts. Almost unrecognisable as the same actor. I had opportunities like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut as you mature in this business, eventually you become a star. Then you\u2019re pretty screwed in terms of referring to yourself as a character actor. You play a lot of the same type of role \u2013 people hire you and say, \u2018It\u2019s you that I want.\u2019 And you live with it, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve done much in the last 10 years that was much different. Driving Miss Daisy and Glory were different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow? It\u2019s just \u2026 me. The character will adapt itself to you rather than the other way round, so I do what piques my interest. Sometimes it\u2019s just the money alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Freeman\u2019s latest film is Zach Braff\u2019s A Good Person, in which he plays the future father-in-law of Florence Pugh. The actor\u2019s career appears not to have been derailed by a 2018 report by CNN featuring testimonies by eight women alleging sexual harassment by the actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Freeman first issued a statement apologising for having unintentionally made anyone feel uncomfortable; the following day, he said: \u201cI am devastated that 80 years of my life is at risk of being undermined, in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut I also want to be clear: I did not create unsafe work environments. I did not assault women. I did not offer employment or advancement in exchange for sex. Any suggestion that I did so is completely false.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Morgan Freeman has said commonly used terms relating to race should be taken out of the lexicon. In an interview with the Sunday Times, the actor said he was keen to \u201csay publicly\u201d that he objected to the terms \u201cBlack History Month\u201d and \u201cAfrican American\u201d. Calling both an \u201cinsult\u201d, Freeman said of the first: \u201cYou\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":31600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[10618,1648,4899,455,183,6573,10420,9886,2761,5591,6621,8123,9127,746,3577,9889,10649,11060,9888,11493,10342,5612,9885,1993,12187,11973,6200,5807,7584,10014,2354,3954,5320,10415,36],"class_list":["post-31599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-actor","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-african-american","tag-assault","tag-black","tag-black-history","tag-black-history-month","tag-de-niro","tag-denzel-washington","tag-europe","tag-eye","tag-february","tag-feel","tag-future","tag-ghettoisation","tag-harassment","tag-insult","tag-insults","tag-interview","tag-law","tag-money","tag-morgan-freeman","tag-my-life","tag-n","tag-one","tag-race","tag-risk","tag-sex","tag-sexual-harassment","tag-washington","tag-will","tag-women","tag-work","tag-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}