Morgan Freeman, a legend in Hollywood in more ways than one, is opening up about how he found his place as an actor in the middle of the civil rights movement and why it’s an “insult” for Black history to be just one month every year.
The actor, 85, who can currently be seen in Zach Braff’s film A Good Person, discussed race in the interview.
He believes Black History Month – which takes place every February and celebrates the cultural achievement of black people – is insulting because it relegates the entire of his heritage to a month.
“Two things I can say publicly that I do not like. Black History Month is an insult. You’re going to relegate my history to a month?”
he said in an interview
“Also, ‘African American’ is an insult. I don’t subscribe to that title,” the actor said. “I do not know how these things get such a grip, but everyone uses ‘African American.'”
Morgan added, “What does it really mean? Most Black people in this part of the world are mongrels. And you say Africa as if it’s a country when it’s a continent, like Europe.”
In 2005, Freeman had explained to a 60 Minutes host that he opposed the celebration of Black History Month because “Black history is American history.”
“Stop talking about it … I am going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man,” Freeman said to host Mike Wallace.
Elsewhere in the interview, Freeman discussed the importance of representation on screen.
He began acting in the later days of the Hays Code, a censorship list of what films were allowed to show which banned, amongst other things, “ridicule of the clergy” and inter-racial relationships. It was abolished in 1968.
“When I was growing up there was no ‘me’ in the movies,” he said.
“If there was a black man in a movie he was funny. Until Sidney Poitier came and gave young people like me the idea that, ‘OK, yes, I can do that.’”
He later said: “The change is that all people are involved now. Everyone. LGBTQ, Asians, black, white, interracial marriages, interracial relationships. All represented. You see them all on screen now and that is a huge jump.”
