‘Red Table Talk’ asks why do women treat each other so badly

'We've got to give each more more grace,' Jada Pinkett Smith said on her popular multigenerational show

Oct 28, 2020

The ladies of Red Table Talk have an affinity for covering touchy subjects that hit close to home. In the latest installment of the Facebook watch series with Jada Pinkett Smith, 49, along with daughter Willow, 19, and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, 66, opened up about the “mean girl” way women sometimes relate to each other, even relationships with their own mothers and daughters.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a mean girl, but I’m going to tell you what I am, and that’s a petty bitch. OK?,” PInkett-Smith confessed. “I’m a petty b*tch because here’s the thing… Now, I may not say some mean things, and I might not do some mean things, but if you do something to me… Baby, let me tell you I’m going to hold on to it.”

“People will say that I’m mean,” chimed in Banfield-Norris. “They will definitely say that I’m mean, but there’s a difference in the meanness because I’m not for the nonsense. I’m not for the bulls—. Probably one of my worst character defects is being judgmental. I am extremely judgmental. And I actually just realized, it’s my own insecurities. So what I don’t like in somebody else is what I don’t like in myself. I’m definitely a work in progress.”

Former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, who was featured on the episode along with Cari Champion also a former ESPN anchor. The two now do a show together for Vice TV called Stick To Sports. Hill opened up about her own experiences with women, particularly her mother. She shared: “My mother’s a recovering addict and we went through a lot when I was growing up and there were some incidents where I felt like ‘Surely, I know she’s got a bad drug habit but it won’t go there.’

Cari Champion and Jemele Hill (Jasmie Durhal)

“And when it went there, it just left me with this incredible sense of disappointment. To be that vulnerable and then it happens with a parent, I think it trains you the rest of your life. One of the things I still struggle with is being vulnerable. My therapist said this one day, ‘Childhood lasts forever.’ Because of that sense of betrayal, it impacts how I have certain friendships because I established that blockade early.”

To that point, Pinkett-Smith rhetorically mused, “If we don’t learn to relate to our mothers, how do we relate to ourselves and then other women? One of the things I realized, I think specifically for Black women, they’re always wrong. It’s just hard. We get judged on everything. We got to give each other more grace. There’s no margin of error for us.”

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