Featuring a Hollywood actor on “The View” is usually a safe bet for the ladies who seem incapable of talking about anything but identity politics.
Even better if that actor belongs to one or more minority groups.
On Tuesday, however, the hosts interviewed one legendary actor who refused to play along with their left-wing talking points: Billy Dee Williams, best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in the original “Star Wars” trilogy.
Sunny Hostin, the host who was in the news recently for learning some of her ancestors were slave owners, asked Williams about his early career, saying, “So you did start … in the industry at a time when few people of color were on TV and in movies.”
Before she could go on, though, Williams said, “Everybody is a ‘people of color.'” Hostin amended her words to say, “Well, a black man.”
“A brown-skinned man?” Williams asked.
Already this interview was more interesting than the average episode of “The View,” but Williams was not finished yet.
Hostin soldiered on, asking, “Early on you struggled to find work, being offered either stereotypical roles or nothing at all. … Did you ever think about quitting, and if you didn’t, what kept you going?”
“You just live from moment to moment,” he answered, “and do what you have to do and expect things to not always go your way, and you just find ways to be innovative, and you find ways to counter whatever you’re up against and move forward.”
Later, Williams got in a somewhat politically incorrect joke, asking the hosts, “What’s that phrase, the gender phrase?” Joy Behar eventually hit on “gender-fluid,” with Williams saying, “My daughter got very excited about that.”
When asked why, he quipped that it was “because she’s a liberal.”
What’s remarkable about this interview is not just Williams’ willingness to joke about one of the new sacred tenets of liberalism, but that he refuses to take the bait and be drawn into a race-based victimhood narrative.
At a time when some of the most absurdly privileged (to borrow the left’s favorite word) actors cry racism when no one wants to watch their terrible movies, Williams instead emphasizes the need to work hard and adapt.
Modern liberals want everyone to cater to them, whether it’s by paying reparations for injustices long past or letting men in dresses use the same bathrooms as little girls.
Williams, however, advocates the exact opposite. He never demanded roles be handed to him based on his race. Instead, he worked hard until his abilities were undeniable.
People like Sunny Hostin love to spread the idea that everything is about race, and the world must be understood in terms of “oppressors” and “oppressed.”
Williams downplays that mindset, emphasizing the hard work and tenacity that are essential for success in any career.
That’s what we should be championing, not the victimhood narrative, which takes success or failure out of your hands and instead makes you helpless in the face of “systemic injustice.”
That Williams was brave enough to not only push back on this narrative but poke fun at gender ideology at the same time — well, that made for one of the most interesting days at “The View” in quite some time.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
