Actor Da’Vinchi is facing backlash over his comments about American work ethic and tensions between Black Americans and other members of the Black diaspora.
The BMF star discussed the casting of Black actors from outside the U.S. during an appearance on Cam Newton’s Funky Friday podcast, suggesting some producers prefer overseas actors because they are more focused on acting.
Da’Vinchi then criticized American work ethic.
“I feel like my generation, our generation and what we’re seeing is like humans are becoming more incompetent,” he said. “America is producing, like we baby our kids in a way that is like unheard of.”
Da’Vinchi, who was born in Brooklyn to Haitian parents, pointed to his own childhood, saying, “I could take care of myself, like fully, at like 8 years old. But in America, no shade to you guys, the way the culture has like moved a majority of its citizens, it’s like you’re just incompetent for a really long time.”
Newton pushed back. “What America’s premise is, is efficiency. If there’s an easier way to do something, that’s what it will be,” he said.
Da’Vinchi responded, “And as collateral, the nation, the kids suffer because they become incompetent.”
The conversation turned to the Black diaspora, with Newton saying, “There’s a stigma those in the Caribbean, Africa, or the UK think that they are better than Black Americans.”
“I think that’s true,” Da’Vinchi said, before adding, “I mean… look, I don’t think it’s right.”
Da’Vinchi also argued that Black Americans need to “move forward” from slavery, pointing to other forms of slavery throughout history. “White people enslaved white people and Black people enslaved Black people too,” he said.
While Africans did participate in systems of slavery in Africa, historians distinguish those systems from the racialized chattel slavery that developed in the Americas.
Virginia Mercury cited historian Adam W. Dean, who said slavery in the New World became distinctive because it was “life-long, hereditary” and “tied to race.”
Da’Vinchi later said in a Threads exchange that his comments were a “generalized statement” and that he “should’ve been more specific,” according to Where Is The Buzz.
Brandon Barry Brown, who said he knew Da’Vinchi personally, criticized the actor in a TikTok video, accusing him of being “very anti-Black.”
“You only exist and can walk down the streets freely because of what Black Americans have done here,” Brown said.
Comedian Del Amo Manny also pushed back, saying Black people have been stereotyped as “lazy” since “we stopped working for free.”
“No one who is lazy or incompetent could have survived chattel slavery or Jim Crow or segregation or the crack epidemic,” Manny said.
The backlash has extended beyond social media. Freedman Nation, an advocacy group representing Black Americans descended from people enslaved in the U.S., added Da’Vinchi to its boycott list Sunday (October 4), criticizing what it described as generalizations that diminish Black American talent and work ethic.
See more reactions to Da’Vinchi’s comments across social media below.
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