Jamie Foxx On The Lesson His Grandmother Taught Him: 'Black Men Can't Make White Man Mistakes'

For Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan, working on the new film Just Mercy was a possibility to flex their star power on an offer that hits close to home: The ways in which the criminal justice system is often stacked against minorities, and especially Black people, from the start.


Based on the memoir of the same name by lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the film follows Stevenson (Jordan) as he works to exonerate Walter McMillian (Foxx), a laborer from Monroeville, Alabama, facing the death penalty for a murder he didn’t commit. The real McMillian was released from prison in 1993, and Stevenson and his corporation, the Equal Justice Initiative, have since worked concertedly to end mass incarceration In America. However there really is still plenty of work to be done, and both Foxx and Jordan know that dismantling the injustice in this nation requires a hard rewiring of how Black people, and Black males in particular, are forced to navigate life.


“You could go out, be having a wonderful day, and just have somebody — the cops — visualize you and yes it just be wrong,” Foxx told MTV News of the constant surveillance Black people often face by extension of simply living their lives. “And you could scream this to the best of your lungs. Millions of us are screaming. We do this each day tell people each and every day that being Black is different and people come and go, ‘Hmm.’ So it's group kind of like you want some days for people to just take this ride and visualize what it's like.”


Such surveillance has also impacted the actor, who told MTV News about an incident that occurred recently in Los Angeles: Foxx was driving his truck while he pulled into a gas station on the high-traffic Sunset Boulevard. From then on, he mentioned a cop determined to prepare a u-turn as well as pull into the gas station parking lot. “He pulled next to me and [was] looking at me like this,” he remembered, adding that he supposed even Los Angeles police “didn't recognize me, I guess he did not have the box set, the DVD, whatever… He don't know who I am and I'm just like, ‘Hey, hello, brother.’ This mother— look at me like, ‘Eh?’” It wasn’t up until a fan approached Foxx for a photo with the star that he says the officer abandoned him alone.


An October 2019 report by the Los Angeles Times noticed that LAPD officers are more likely to search Black and Latinx people while in traffic aids in averting than they are to search white people; the report showed that, over a 10-month period, police searched 24 percent of Black drivers and passengers soon after pulling them over, compared to 16 percent of Latinx people and 5 percent of white people. While the report notes that “racial disparities never necessarily indicate bias,” such disparities aren’t uncommon: a Bureau of Justice report also detailed how police are more likely to stop Black residents than Latinx or white residents, and that officers are more likely to use force against people of color than white people. Judges often sentence Black boys to prison with longer sentences than white males for the same crime, and Black males are 2.5 times more likely than white males to be killed by a police officer.


“As far because the justice system, my grandmother taught me early that it's gonna be different,” Foxx mentioned. He remembered his grandmother punishing him for being out past curfew, nevertheless as soon as he asked why he was being disciplined, he mentioned, “You know what my grandmother informed me? ‘Black males can't make white man mistakes. You remember that for the rest of your life.’ Even right now once we toil about things like, ‘Well, so-and-so did it and he’s white.’ ‘Yeah, however we're different.’ They look at us differently. You do that, it's just skewed differently. You have got to know it.”


Jordan, who also served as executive producer on Just Mercy, told MTV News that he hopes the film accommodates trim light on the ways in which the system disproportionately affects weak communities. “We're attempting get as several people to be able to see this as possible because it's of course an epidemic, it's naturally a problem,” he mentioned. “Obviously the system is flawed.” Although given that a film centered on social justice may receive different attention than a blockbuster superhero flick (even if those frequently touch on issues of inequality in their own way), it was key that each person working on Just Mercy understand the magnitude of the project they were undertaking.


“The main concern is protecting him [Stevenson], his legacy, and what he's attempting to do. Making sure we portray him in the correct way, the sincere way, what his lifestyle, what his trials and tribulations, what his memoir reflects. That's what we really wanna put on screen,” Jordan explained. “I think everybody involved understood that before they signed on, before they got really involved with it, which makes the process that much easier because everybody has a normal goal.”


Foxx agreed, calling the film “one of the most crucial movies that I've ever been a part of.” (This praise came even before former president Barack Obama called Just Mercy one of his preference films of 2019.) And he mentioned that Jordan’s presence helped clinch his involvement in the project.


“I will tell you that Michael B. Jordan in this world of… categorize kind of make-believe that we stay in, is a stand-up guy, and I mean that,” Foxx said. He felt inspired by the conversation that ensued any time Jordan called him to sell him on the script, clinching his belief that telling Stevenson and McMillian’s story with each other was the correct thing to do. “The words that he discussed to me, he gave me the possibility to have my artsy integrity intact,” Foxx added.


Jordan, who considers Foxx a mentor, continued: “You're defined by who you put on. I can only do this for so long — nevertheless long that's gonna be. Nevertheless your legacy is who you help and who you're able to push forward. And I want to take his example and continue to do that.”