‘Everyone’ is facing challenges, actor-activist Crews tells students
Hundreds of Nelson Mandela High School students gathered Tuesday as guest speaker Terry Crews shared inspirational messages, including the assurance that “you’re not alone.”
The actor, activist and former football player was in Calgary to appear as the keynote speaker at the eighth annual YWHISPER fundraising gala supporting YW Calgary’s programs and services, which was expected to draw more than 900 guests.
At his afternoon presentation on gender equality and masculinity, Crews assured students that everyone is facing challenges.
“When … you think, ‘it’s just me,’ please, please know that it’s everyone,” he said.
The star of the television show Brooklyn Nine-Nine shared his own experience of growing up in Flint, Mich., his father’s struggles with alcoholism and being raised in a highly restrictive environment. He also urged students to talk about their issues and to ask their peers how they are really doing.
Crews said such public speaking engagements are part of his accountability for the past.
“To me, this is more important than every movie I could ever do,” he said during a news conference at the northeast high school.
The actor, who shared his story in his book Manhood in 2014, described his former self as a “cardcarrying member of the toxic masculinity creed.”
“I totally looked the other way, and I was part of a complicit system,” he said.
That all changed, he said, when his wife left him — a day that marked the beginning of “a new future.”
“It was like, ‘it’s me,’” he said. “I have been doing the wrong thing. I believed the wrong message. And I had to revamp my whole life from Square 1.”
Crews also cited the importance of the Me Too movement in breaking the silence on sexual violence. The initiative prompted him to share his own story of being sexually assaulted.
“By coming forward, let me tell you, it breaks things,” he said. “It’s amazing. This is why, right now, there’s a culture change over the last year. Once the story comes out, everybody’s viewpoint is different.”
He also stressed the need for apologies to be accompanied by accountability — something that he has taken to heart in his role as an activist.
“I have to tell my story in order to make amends, in order to correct the complicity that I had,” he said.
“Men need to say, ‘you know what, we messed that up … how can we correct it?’ You talk to the victim and ask them how it can be corrected.”
Crews said he plans to continue doing his part by sharing his story.
“It’s so important to the healing of our society, to the healing of the people who’ve been wronged,” he said. “And it’s the way back. Because this is fixable … I am proof.”
When asked about the message he delivers to young men about reimagining masculinity, Crews said his advice is to “check other men” when they see inappropriate behaviour.
“Tell another guy … ‘hey, man, we don’t do that here,’” he said. “It’s so simple and so amazingly effective.”
YW Calgary CEO Sue Tomney thanked Crews for his message to students.
“It’s so much a story that has to be told — a message to boys, to youth,” she said. “There’s 1,800 kids next door who left here today with this kind of message, and it is the next generation.”
Men need to say, ‘you know what, we messed that up … how can we correct it?’ You talk to the victim and ask them how it can be corrected.