Red Table Talk confronts Lori Loughlin’s daughter on her ‘white privilege’
'I just found it really ironic that she chose three Black women to reach out to for her redemption story.'
Lori Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli appeared on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk this week, but if she expected to be treated gently, she had another thing coming.
Although the Facebook Watch series has gained a reputation for being the go-to forum to make amends after a scandal, during Tuesday’s episode, Pinkett Smith’s mother and co-host, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, minced no words while calling out the controversial social media influencer on her white privilege.
Read More: Lori Loughlin begins 2-month prison term for college admissions scandal
“I fought it tooth and nail,” Banfield-Norris confessed.
And while her daughter and granddaughter Willow Smith appeared significantly more sympathetic towards Giannulli, the 67-year-old was non-plussed, explaining, “I just found it really ironic that she chose three Black women to reach out to for her redemption story. I feel like here we are, [a] white woman coming to Black women for support when we don’t get the same from them.”
“Do you understand why different people in the community would be upset? Do you have any understanding of why I would be upset at your being here and what you all did and the harm that it caused?” Banfield-Norris asked the influencer after she came out to join them.
“I would also love to hear it from you. I feel like it’s a good learning thing,” the 21-year-old said. “We had the means to do something and we completely took it and ran with it. It really cannot be excused, on paper it’s bad.”
“Her being here is the epitome of white privilege to me,” she added.
Read More: Lori Loughlin’s husband Giannulli sentenced to 5 months in college bribery scheme
“I understand where you’re coming from but let me just be clear: I never want to be the thing that was done to me by white women,” Pinkett-Smith countered.
“There is so much devastation, particularly this year, 2020, with the pandemic and everything brought to the table about how there is so much inequality and inequity, that when you come to the table with something like this, it’s like, ‘Child, please.'” Banfield-Norris pressed on, clearly unmoved.
“I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted with everything we have to deal with as a community and I just don’t have the energy to put into the fact that you lost your endorsements or you’re not in school right now,” she continued. “Because at the end of the day, you’re going to be OK. Because your parents are going to go in and they’re going to do their 60 days and they’re going to pay their fine, and you guys are going to go on and be OK and you will live your life. And there’s so many of us that it’s not going to be that situation. It just makes it very difficult right now for me to care in this atmosphere that we’re in right now.”
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