Halle Berry reacts to radio host’s racist comments: ‘All Black women are beautiful’
The Oscar-winning Berry, who launched a website and line of fitness gear last year called rē•spin, gave Rob Lederman her side-eye on Twitter.
Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry responded to comments made by a fired radio jock comparing Black women to shades of toast, calling the statements “disgusting.”
Retweeting an excerpt of the show, Berry wrote: “Disgusting. It’s ridiculous this type of nonsense is still being broadcasted across airwaves. ALL Black women are beautiful and worthy, Rob Lederman. GTFOH.”
Lederman was suspended from his job on 97 Rock in Buffalo after saying, “I may get into trouble for this. I will never go to Serena Williams level. But I’m very comfortable with, I’m very comfortable … a Halle Berry level. I need a little bit of mulatto still coming through.”
He also disparaged CBS This Morning host Gayle King, contending she isn’t even on his “toaster level.”
Berry won an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal as a distressed wife in Monster’s Ball in 2002. Earlier this year, she told The Mirror, “The heartbreak I have is because I really thought that night meant that very soon after that, other women of colour, Black women, would stand beside me.”
“Now it’s been 20 years, and no one has,” she said, “and so every time Oscar time comes around, I get very reflective and I think, ‘Well maybe this year, maybe this year.’ It has become heartbreaking that no one else has stood there.”
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“That moment,” Berry maintained, “mattered because so many people have come up to me over the years and told me how that moment shifted their thinking about what they could achieve, what they aspire to do, or what they believed they could do – that they were touched by that moment. That is the value that I know is real.”
Two Black women are nominated for Best Actress at this year’s Academy Awards: Viola Davis for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Andra Day for The United States vs. Billie Holiday.
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The 54-year-old Berry, who’s still as stunning as ever, early last year launched a website and line of fitness gear called rē•spin. According to its website, “rē•spin is a health and wellness platform created by Halle Berry that appreciates the multi-faceted nature of the pathway toward personal alignment. Once you CONNECT to yourself, NOURISH your soul, STRENGTHEN your body, AWAKEN your mind, and GIVE back, you will realize ETERNAL beauty.”
On the site, Berry writes, “I believe good health and wellness is what eternal beauty is all about. The world is constantly evolving, building a deeper connection between health, wellness and what we know as being beautiful.”
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