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Actress Jenifer Lewis: Jesus Is Most Black Women’s Husband, We Are a Conquered Race

Actress Jenifer Lewis: Jesus Is Most Black Women’s Husband, We Are a Conquered Race

Lewis

Actor Jenifer Lewis, July 15, 2022, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)/Photo by cottonbro studio

In an undated interview that has surfaced on social media, actress Jenifer Lewis declared that Black people are a “conquered race” and that Jesus is the husband of many Black women.

A longer snippet of the interview can be heard here.

Lewis has acted on Broadway, in films such as “Beaches” (1988), “Sister Act” (1992), “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993), “Poetic Justice” (1993), “The Preacher’s Wife” (1996), “The Brothers” (2001), “The Cookout” (2004), “Think Like a Man” (2012) and in the sequel “Think Like a Man Too” (2014). But she is best known for her role on the popular television show “black-ish.”

Lewis is known unofficially as “The Mother of Black Hollywood” (also the name of her 2017 memoir).

In the interview, Lewis seems to be addressing the state of Black women, and how the government played a role in the growth of single Black mothers. Without a man in the household, Lewis was saying many Black women turned to religion for comfort.

Black women were “cleaning people’s floors, and you know I’m gonna say this out loud, Jesus is most Black women’s husbands…you see they did a number on us (Black people). We are a conquered race,” she said. “They put the Black man out of the house in order for the Black mother to get welfare. The man couldn’t be in the house. He had to be working; of course, they wouldn’t give him a job.”

Some Black activists place some blame on the U.S. government (post-slavery) for the breakdown of the Black family.

They argue “that the nation’s welfare system has encouraged families to split up and has led to a state of welfare dependency for generation after generation of Blacks. They would reduce Government social programs, require able individuals on welfare to work and place more emphasis on apprehending fathers and forcing them to support their children,” reported The New York Times in 1983.

As Lewis pointed out the welfare system forbid homes with unemployed men to receive welfare, so, often times, in Black households, the man moved out so his mate and children could receive assistance.

For many years, “the nation’s primary welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, denied benefits to families if an adult male was in the house.” That bar was stricken in 1968, and states were permitted, but not required, to cover two-parent families in which the would-be breadwinner was unemployed or underemployed,” The New York Times reported.

Actor Jenifer Lewis addresses the crowd during a ceremony to award her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Friday, July 15, 2022, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)/Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/jesus-christ-figurine-7566189/