Justin Timberlake apologizes for tweet about Jesse Williams’ speech at BET Awards

Justin Timberlake has apologized after feeling the wrath of social media following a tweet he sent out about Jesse Williams’ passionate acceptance speech at the BET Awards on Sunday evening.

Williams was the recipient of BET’s Humanitarian Award on June 26 and when he took the stage he gave a powerful speech which brought the crowd in attendance to their feet.

Timberlake was also a fan of the speech, but when he took to Twitter with his reaction he ended up igniting a social media firestorm in which users began attacking him.

After JT wrote "@iJesseWilliams tho...#Inspired #BET2016," the backlash began.

"Did you like the part when Jesse talked about white people stealing from us? That should resonate with you," one Twitter user wrote.

Another tweeted “inspired to do what? Continue to emulate black culture through your music while ignoring issues affecting black people?”

And another user asked: "So does this mean you’re going to stop appropriating our music and culture? And apologize to Janet too?", which Timberlake responded to with “Oh, you sweet soul. The more you realize that we are the same, the more we can have a conversation.”

That response then led to even more outrage so the 35-year-old singer decided to clear things by apologizing and saying that he had been misunderstood.


Timberlake ended his tweeting on the subject there, but social media never sleeps and other users continued to go at him. You can check out some of those tweets below.

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