This weekend, Hollywood Unlocked, the celebrity gossip blog owned by Jason Lee, hosted its fourth annual Hollywood Unlocked Impact Awards, with such honorees as Cardi B, Sharon Stone, Da Brat and Jonathan Majors, who received the perseverance award. Hmph… It is very interesting how we call having to face the consequences of one’s own actions “perseverance.”
Majors saw his star rise after his starring role in The Last Black Man in San Francisco became a Sundance Film Festival hit. Majors really became a household name with the success of the wildly popular television series Lovecraft Country and playing supervillain Kang the Conquer in the Marvel movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Lovecraft’s storyline combined fighting the Deep South racism of the early twentieth century with magic. Black women collectively swooned over Majors’ handsome enough face combined with a physique that the gods would envy. He was dubbed by many as being “Civil Rights Fine,” as if his face had seen some trouble that his body produced muscle to protect itself from. While Black women continued to swoon over the nice guy that they only hoped would finish last, in a good way, Majors was hiding a major secret—his white girlfriend Grace Jabbari.
After a year and a half of dating, Majors and Jabbari called it quits in March 2023. Their split stemmed from a 911 call that found emergency services dispatched to his home concerning Grace being unresponsive after an altercation the day before. He was later charged with several crimes related to domestic violence. The fallout of this incident was swift; white Hollywood quickly turned its back on Majors. The United States Army pulled recruitment ads featuring the actor (when your client, who goes around the world killing people, no longer wants you to represent them, you know it is bad). He was also dropped from his management and PR agencies, disinvited from the Met Gala and released by Disney and Marvel Studios.
Due to all the consequences of his actions following him, Hollywood Unlocked decided to give him an award for perseverance. When he went to accept the award, Majors was immediately embraced by the presenter, self-help guru and hairstyle risktaker, Iyanla Vanzant, who not only kissed his forehead as he bowed his head to her in a very sheepish, child-like manner but caressed his back, while making stroking motions with her open palms, disconnecting from his body, as if to toss off the bad energy that loomed around him. It was a loving embrace that mirrored the community’s response to the abuser rather than the abused. He began to weep in her arms and continued doing so as she handed him his award while someone sprang excitedly from their seat in applause.
Vanzant mirrored every overprotective Black elder who preached about freeing women but who still runs to wipe away the tears (and nose) of the abuser.
Per redemption protocol, Majors immediately thanked his “lord and savior, Jesus Christ,” as he continued to treat his head like a pendulum, rocking it back and forth, as if to shake off a bad time in his life, hoping to conjure a new one. The crowd, of course, went ape-sh*t, because if there is nothing our community likes to do more than continue to share space with abusers, it’s praise the guy who allowed our abuse to continue for hundreds of years on end. He then thanked the owner of Hollywood Unlocked, Jason Lee, who has made a lot of money from reporting about Majors’ troubles.
Majors gave a 15-minute speech in which he named and dropped all of his celebrity supporters, including Will Smith and Whoopi Goldberg, all the while channeling a Baptist preacher’s tone and countenance.
#Kang actor Jonathan Majors breaks into tears as he accepts the Perseverance Award at Hollywood Unlocked Impact Awards.
— Cosmic Marvel (@cosmic_marvel) June 22, 2024
In his 17-minute speech, he details his arrest, the conviction, and the Hollywood stars who supported him.
(via @chrissgardner) pic.twitter.com/LIdzk4Tk7h
When he finally finished, he was met with a standing ovation for his Oscar-winning performance. What was also included in the speech was Majors’ recounting how he felt discriminated against and the dangers of being a Black man. What is always perplexing in situations where Black men run back to the Black community’s arms after claiming they are victims of racism due to being accused of assault or harassment of their white partners is if they feel that dating white women is so dangerous, then why do it? And worse, why is the Black community quick to allow them to return, hello Kanye, goodbye O.J.
Just because the woman he abused is white does not mean he is not an abuser and does not eliminate the chances of him abusing Black women. In fact, Black women were used by the Black Panthers as practice for assaulting white women. While some of his charges were dropped, Majors was still convicted of reckless assault and harassment in the third degree, with domestic violence already having a relatively low conviction rate. It is easy to say that he was railroaded by the justice system, as many Black men have been and are are, but according to Rolling Stone, which interviewed 40 people from Jonathan’s past, Majors has a history of physical, emotional and verbal abuse that spans well over a decade.
Little is known about Majors’ dating history by the public at large, but it is quite obvious that he was not making appearances with Jabbari with the same openness as he is with Black Hollywood Baddie Meagan Good—whom he refers to as his “Coretta”—a reference of course to Coretta Scott King.
Jonathan Majors and Meagan Good at the ‘Hollywood Unlocked Impact’ Awards pic.twitter.com/7fjwclPGvV
— Glock Topickz (@Glock_Topickz) June 22, 2024
Sure, everyone has a past and should be allowed to grow beyond it, but not everyone’s past involves beating up their spouse, either. It is important to the human condition to believe that people can change because what is the point of fighting for better if you do not think that people and things are capable of such, but this was JUST last year. After he was convicted, Majors still continued to deny that he was responsible for her documented physical injuries, continuing to not be accountable for the harm he caused her and ultimately himself.
Majors’ acceptance speech and acceptance by the community is a classic tenet of the Black apology tour; you do not have to actually apologize for it to be a box office success.
