It was hard to miss Nick Cannon at Perry Ellis’ presentation on Monday morning (July 11). The actor arrived in a steel-blue vest suit and spiky silver metallic Louboutin loafers, beating the Monday blues in the most fashionable way.
Though the actor was in good spirits for creative director Michael Maccari’s show, held at the Hippodrome Building, it was difficult to forget last week’s shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. A day before New York Fashion Week: Men’s kicked off, Cannon took to social media to write a poem expressing his frustration over recent police shootings and what #BlackLivesMatter means to him.
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?Part of Cannon’s poetry reads: “When I say Black lives matter that don’t mean yours don’t/ When I say Black lives matter/ Don’t mean white folks can’t get on the boat/ So it’s like when I say save the whales/ That don’t mean the other fish can’t float/ It just means the whales are endangered/ Just like my species.”
“It takes much more than a hashtag to make a change, and I think people focus on the hashtag too much,” the America’s Got Talent host told Pret-a-Reporter of the message he was hoping to send to his followers. “Let’s come up with another one if it’s divisive — that’s not the purpose. It’s to create awareness.”
Cannon is among the many folks in Hollywood to respond to recent police brutalities.
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“I said a lot of things like, ‘I’ll stop making it about race when they stop making it about race.’ People were like, ‘We’re tired of you guys saying Black Lives Matter.’ I’m tired of having to say it,” Cannon said. “I don’t want to sit back and debate statistics and how many people are killed. Killing is just wrong in general. Life is a life. This nation is hurt. It’s broken and we’ve got to fix it. It takes all of us to do it.”
This article was originally published on The Hollywood Reporter.