Anthony Mackie Says ‘Black Men With Dreadlocs’ Comments Taken Out of Context [VIDEO]

Anthony Mackie was recently under fire when he talked race in America and natural hair. In an interview with The Grio he talked the Oscar snubs claiming “people are just tired of being bombarded with race right now, so everybody is shying away from certain topics and certain movies.”

That first riled many, but it was his in-depth opinion on men with dreadlocks that really set the Internet ablaze and him a target of black Twitter backlash. He said that dread locks are a trend that attract racial profiling in America.

My nephew wanted to grow dreadlocks. I’m like fine, I’ll sit you down and I’ll watch The First 48 with you and everybody you see on that show, that’s doing something wrong, they’re black dudes with dreadlocks. So, do you want to be seen as part of the problem or do you want to be an individual? Let’s just say you have locs and you walking down the street. The police pull you over and say you fit the description of somebody.  You start yelling and arguing with the cops. Next thing you know you pressed up against the wall going to jail for something you’re not even involved in just because you look like somebody and you don’t know how to handle yourself.

24 hour later, he’s speaking out on the subject again, but this time he’s defending his words, claiming the Grio’s interviewer Chris Witherspooon mislead the public with the editing of the interview.  In a recent interview with Eurweb, Mackie says he didn’t realize his comments were going to be used in the story.

I felt that we could sit and have a candid conversation about race and he wouldn’t take