Justin Timberlake apologises over Jesse Williams BET speech Twitter row

‘I apologise to anyone that felt I was out of turn. I have nothing but LOVE FOR YOU AND ALL OF US,’ Timberlake tweets

Justin Timberlake (Getty)

Justin Timberlake has said he feels “misunderstood” after he defended himself against claims of cultural appropriation following his praise of Jesse Williams' powerful speech on race at the BET awards.

On Sunday evening, Grey’s Anatomy actor Williams received the humanitarian award for his civil rights activism. In a politically-charged speech, the 34-year-old highlighted the continuing racial inequalities in America.

The speech gained much support on social media including from Timberlake who tweeted to his 55.6 million followers that he was “inspired” by Williams while also re-tweeting somebody who suggested Williams run for President.

His tweet was met with criticism by some who accused the "Rock Your Body" singer of having appropriated black culture during his career, which they found a contradiction to Williams' speech which touched on cultural appropriation.

"Inspired to do what? Continue to emulate black culture through your music while ignoring issues affecting black people?" wrote one user. Others claimed Timberlake is an example of a white artist "gentifying our genius" – a quote from Williams' speech. "When you figure out that you [...] are the problem he was talking about, let us know," wrote another user.

When one user wrote: “So does this mean you’re going to stop appropriating our music and culture? And apologise to Janet too?”, referring to Timberlake's R&B style of music and the infamous SuperBowl ‘wardobe malfunction' of 2004 – where some believe Janet Jackson took the majority of the backlash – the singer replied: “The more you realise that we are the same, the more we can have a conversation,” before shutting down the exchange with: "Bye".

This response only encouraged further criticism from users who continued to accuse him of appropriating black culture and also called out his response that "we are the same".

Timberlake then backtracked on his earlier defence, claiming he felt "misunderstood" and maintained he was simply expressing how “truly inspired” he felt after watching Williams' speech. He then issued an apology to anyone who believed he was "out of turn".

A representative for Timberlake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read Williams' powerful acceptance speech below:

“This award, this is not for me. This is for the real organisers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students, that are realising that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. It's kind of basic mathematics, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilise. Now this is also in particular for the black women, in particular, who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.

Now what we've been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what's going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.

Yesterday would’ve been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday, so I don’t want to hear anymore about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt.

Now the thing is though, all of us in here getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. Now dedicating our lives to get money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body, when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies.

There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There has been no job we haven't done, there's been no tax they haven't levied against us, and we've paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here, 'You’re free,’ they keep telling us, ‘But she would’ve been alive if she hadn’t acted so free'.

Freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but, you know what though, the hereafter is a hustle. We want it now. And let's get a couple of things straight, just a little sidenote, the burden of the brutalised is not to comfort the bystander. That's not our job, stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people than do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.

We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind, while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold. Ghettoising and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is, just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real."