Jada Pinkett Smith talks with Ellen Pao about identifying as a person of color: 'It is not the oppression Olympics'
Jada Pinkett Smith hosted a live version of her show Red Table Talk at the 2019 Makers Conference on Thursday night, and the internet hit was just as real, raw and engaging in person. The actress invited Ellen Pao to the table to discuss her landmark lawsuit brought against her former employer for sexual discrimination and retaliation in 2012. Topics ranged from women supporting women to gender stereotypes, and, in typical Red Table Talk fashion, no questions were off limits.
“I’m going to ask you something ignorant,” Smith told Pao. “I was sitting with my friends today and I was watching some of your videos. … It was a group of Asian students, I believe. They were considering themselves people of color.”
Smith admitted, “When I talk about people of color, I am talking about everybody. Native American, Latin, black, everybody, Asians. So my friend was like, ‘Oh, my goodness they are calling themselves people of color.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ They considered themselves if you’re not white, you are a person of color. But here’s the question, what color?”
Pao, who is Asian, said she thinks of herself as yellow, the traditional stereotype. “But it is a distinguishing color,” she said. “But I think it should be bonding, I hope, for other people. I feel very much connected with black people, with Latin people because we have had the shared experience of unfairness.” Basically, she said, “It is not the oppression Olympics.”
However, Pao noted, it drives her bonkers when “some people lump Asians together with whites.” She added, “We have different experiences, and I think it drives a wedge between Asians and black people and Latin people. We should all be working together. Change isn’t going to come if we are working separately.”
Smith, who called Pao a “sister girl” and a “gangster,” noted, “That is including our white sisters too. We all need each other. That is the bottom line. You know it. It is creating this nation of womanhood. Real talk.”
Read more from the Makers Conference:
Jennifer Garner calls out inequality in the entertainment industry: ‘This is a very male world’
Hillary Clinton says Speaker Nancy Pelosi proves it ‘takes a woman’ to get things done
