Last year, I wrote about how the Golden Globes ceremony was frustratingly apolitical. “There is a long history of performers using their platforms at awards ceremonies to uplift social issues, to cause a bit of political commotion, or to try to disrupt the idea that the only point of awards shows is glitz, glamour, and escapism,” I wrote last year when most winners opted out of using their platforms to speak to anything of substance. This year, I was looking forward to Davis’s honor, not just because she’s deserving of all of the praise, accolades, and proverbial flowers that can possibly be bestowed on a performer of her caliber, but because I expected her speech to be all the things Viola Davis usually is: powerful, inspiring, and refreshingly honest. This is the woman who used her Emmys acceptance speech in 2015 to call out the inequities Black women, specifically, face in Hollywood. “Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there,” she said before thanking Shonda Rhimes for “redefin[ing] what it means to be beautiful, to be sexy, to be a leading woman, to be Black.” Finally, she took a moment to acknowledge her fellow Black women in Hollywood: “… to the Taraji P. Hensons, the Kerry Washingtons, the Halle Berrys, the Nicole Beharies, the Meagan Goods, to Gabrielle Union: Thank you for taking us over that line.”
