BMF actor Da’Vinchi sat down on The Breakfast Club and admitted he never should have called Americans incompetent, three weeks after his comments on Cam Newton’s podcast landed him on a boycott list and earned him Donkey of the Day from Charlamagne Tha God.
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Charlamagne got right to it and asked whether he believes Black Americans use slavery as an excuse for where they are today. “No, I mean, it’s legitimately why we’re here today,” Da’Vinchi said. “So no, no, no, no. That’s, that’s, no, heck no.” When Charlamagne told him he needed to get that answer out faster, he tightened it up. “It’s not an excuse. It’s a reality. It’s why we’re here right now.”
The backlash started with his October 2 appearance on Newton’s Funky Friday podcast. While talking about how American kids are raised, Da’Vinchi said Americans stay incompetent for a really long time. When Newton brought up the stigma that people from the Caribbean, Africa and the UK think they are better than Black Americans, he said he thought that was true, while adding that he didn’t think the attitude was right. He also argued that Black people need to move forward from slavery, pointing out that white people enslaved white people throughout history. Freedmen Nation, an advocacy group for Black Americans descended from people enslaved in the United States, added him to its boycott list on October 4. Charlamagne gave him Donkey of the Day the next morning.
Da’Vinchi, who was born in Brooklyn to Haitian parents, said he didn’t realize how bad things had gotten at first. “I’m not on social media as much as people think,” he said, explaining that he logs off after he posts and takes Sundays as his Sabbath. Then the calls started coming in. One of the things he saw going around claimed he said Black people are lazy. “I was just like, wow, where did that come from?” He said he had to sit down and watch the full interview himself, and seeing it cut into clips changed how he saw it. “And I was like, dang, that would hurt me too. I definitely understand how it could feel like hearing something like that.”
On the word itself, he owned it. “I used a harsh word. I should have said a different word,” he said. He insisted he was talking about the nation as a whole and his own generation, not one group of people. He said the thinking came from his mental health advocacy, including a tour with former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, and a worry that leaning on technology for everything is wearing down people’s ability to think critically. “We have a lack of metacognition, thinking about your own thinking,” he said. “But I know my wording was clumsy. I should have used different language than ‘incompetent.’”
When a host pointed out that he did say incompetent, he didn’t dodge it. “I know, I said incompetent. That’s what I’m saying.” What he pushed back on was the idea that he told anyone to forget slavery. “I never said forget slavery. I’ve never said that.”
Charlamagne reminded him that he did say move past it, and that every time Black people have tried to move past slavery, something else has been waiting. Da’Vinchi agreed, but said he was speaking to the resilience that has always defined Black people. He described the advice his mentors gave him. “You didn’t get the job and they gave it away, you gotta move forward. I can’t live in that space. So forgive me if my thinking was offensive, but that’s the resilience I try to tap into.” He pointed to Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman as the kind of people he had in mind.
Charlamagne then pressed him on the white slavery point and asked what it had to do with race based chattel slavery in America. This is where BMF actor Da’Vinchi gave the most ground. “I should have slowed down and really took time with the transatlantic slave trade, because it was the worst. I agree. It was the only slavery based strictly on color and race.” He agreed that enslaved people were treated as property and that the condition passed down to their children. “There was no escaping it,” he said. His point, he explained, was that oppression has shown up across nations and groups throughout history. “It is not unique to one color. It is a human trait.”
Charlamagne said he believed Da’Vinchi was sincere precisely because he hadn’t lost anything. He hadn’t lost followers and he was still getting booked. “For you to be here just to have this conversation and tell people that’s not what you meant, I can tell you’re sincere,” Charlamagne said. “I still think you should give a formal apology.”
Da’Vinchi gave him one. “I apologize that my wording was harsh, and my message got lost with my clumsy wording,” he said. “Looking back I’m like, oh, I shouldn’t have said that like that. I see how they took that. It was kind of sloppy. But I believe in unity. I believe in love.”
Then a host hit him with one more question: “Do all lives matter?”
“No, I’m not doing that,” Da’Vinchi said. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
