![]() ![]() “We are just like your husband, son, your father, your brothers. The point of Question Bridge, according to Williams, is to show everybody that black men are not the “bogey man”. Part art project, part traveling exhibit, part safe space that exists within the internet it allows black Americans to “be a village again” and helps provide answers to the younger generation, says Williams. ‘We can’t just show up and tell people what they should be doing in condescending bullshit manner.’ Photograph: Noah Smith/The GuardianĪ lot of Williams’ social justice work requires going where the people are – their neighborhoods, their schools, even tapping into their online communities.īy reaching black males online, Question Bridge has allowed them to post videos asking and answering questions that they might have always wanted other black men within and beyond their communities to answer. “We can’t just show up and tell people what they should be doing in a condescending bullshit manner, which is common for a lot of organizations,” he says. They do the hard work on the ground by empowering local organizers. One of them is the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization that develops community-based solutions to help protect voting rights, increase school attendance and end the school-to-prison pipeline.Īdvancement Project employees are “social justice ninjas”, says Williams. Now, when he’s not shooting he’s working with different organizations to empower and inform people on the ground in communities that are struggling. He taught mostly high school, but also had stints in kindergarten and seventh grade. After graduating from Temple University in Philadelphia, Williams became a teacher. “It consisted of maybe 12 people because it was a white private school … the righteous 12 though,” he says smiling. While in high school, Williams became co-president of his school’s black student union. When his family moved to suburban Massachusetts during his adolescence, Williams, who is biracial, went from being one of the whitest kids in his area to being one of the darkest. “I also lived below the poverty line for my entire childhood.” Growing up in Chicago, that was a big part of the community that we were in and the people that were in our house,” he says. “My parents were both activists and I really connected to the social justice movement. When he is not playing a doctor at Seattle Grace hospital, Williams serves on the board of directors of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, and he works as one of the executive producers of Question Bridge, a trans-media art project/exhibit that focused on the experience of black men in the US. That’s why I wake up.”Įven now as he spends most of his time in Los Angeles filming Grey’s Anatomy, Williams remains involved with the social justice movement. I could still get around to taking the bar. “I didn’t quite fill out,” he quips before talking about his aspirations in law: “That was the plan. It was that or being a football player, says Williams, recalling his childhood aspirations. Yet, even if he were killed off, Williams has a back-up plan: being a civil rights attorney. Williams plays Jackson Avery, a handsome doctor who unlike some of his other male colleagues – McSteamy and McDreamy – has been able to escape death thus far. ![]()
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