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Note: When attempting to convey sincerity in an apology you’re giving and in owning up to your actions, including the “disrespect” you perceive to have been directed at you and yours isn’t a good look. It makes it look like you’re indirectly trying to excuse yourself in the midst of your apology. Anyway, he continues addressing Union herself.

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But this mea culpa may be too little too late. Sometimes when you do wrong—and especially when you double-down on that wrong and then triple-down on that wrong (by tweeting dumb shit like, “There is only one woman one [sic] earth I have to please. Her name is Rebecca. Not my mother, my sister, my daughters or co-workers. I will let their husbands/ boyfriends/ partners take care of them. Rebecca gives me WINGS.”) You end up veering off into a place of no return. You’ve gone above and beyond the duty of “doing too much” and now any apology you give is going to fall flat.

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Former NBA star and husband to Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade, was none too impressed with Crews’ apology.

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Educator and activist Zellie Imani joined Wade in his disavowing of Crews.

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It can’t be emphasized enough that the main issue here is that, in the wake of Union calling out racism, Crews decided he needed to keep things on an even keel with AGT instead of either backing a fellow black person up or simply staying silent. Even if it’s true that he never experienced any racism there himself (which, for a large black man in a predominantly white environment, is going to be a hard sell, but whatever), acting as a neutral observer only serves white privilege and the white establishment’s culture of covert and overt racism in the workplace, which they will always seek plausible deniability for first before even beginning to reckon with it.

Twitter user @SFrenchLee responded best, quoting Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we have to interfere.”

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