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Cape Town – John Legend has responded to a paparazzo’s racial remarks at JFK airport last week.
Speaking to Variety magazine over the weekend, the Love Me Now hitmaker addressed the incident in which a photographer approached him and his wife Chrissy Teigen and made racially offensive comments towards him.
John recalled, “We were right next to each other and we looked at each other like ‘did he really just say that?’ and he really said it, he basically called me a monkey.”
The 38-year-old then added while dehumanisation has always been a method of racism and is part of American history, it is clearly and unfortunately still happening.
He said, “Black folks have had to deal with being called monkeys for a long time and dehumanisation has always been kind of a method of racism and subjugation of black people and that’s just part of American history — and it’s part of the present, apparently.”
John, who along with Chrissy was shocked by the incident, still walked away the bigger person. He said, “I’m not hurt by someone saying that to me because I’m smarter, I’m stronger. I look down on that person that would say something like that. But it’s a shame that it still exists.”
Watch the video here:
Shortly after the incident, Chrissy took to Twitter to exclaim her disgust and disappointment.
She tweeted:
