Listen to Jesse Williams' powerful BET Awards speech on race in America

While accepting the Humanitarian Award Sunday night at the BET Awards, actor Jesse Williams gave a powerful speech about race in America and the pressing need for equality.

The Grey's Anatomy star joined the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and was also the executive producer of Stay Woke, a documentary out in May about Black Lives Matter. BET CEO Debra Lee said Williams received the award because of his "continued efforts and steadfast commitment to furthering social change," but he said the honor wasn't for him, but rather the "real organizers all over the country, the activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do."

Williams said he also wanted to set a few things straight, primarily that "the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander — that's not our job so let's stop with all that. If you have a critique for our resistance then you'd better have an established record, a critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down." For centuries, "we've been floating this country on credit," Williams continued, and "we're done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, [and] our entertainment." Watch the video below. Catherine Garcia

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