The actor came under fire after defending his girlfriend's past tweets.
Ryan Guzman is coming under fire for his comments about using racial slurs and stereotypes among friends. The 9-1-1 star's co-stars and fans alike have called out the actor after he made controversial comments during an Instagram Live video on Sunday.
The controversy started when Guzman addressed recently resurfaced old tweets from his girlfriend, Chrysti Ane, in which she used the n-word multiple times.
"You telling her that she can't speak through Twitter to her black friends, that have allowed her to say that back and forth to them, specifically?" Guzman asked on his live video. "Mind you, that is a private conversation had on a social platform, I can see the misconstrued insight on that."
"That being said, I have plenty of friends — black, white, Asian, Indian, whatever they are, Korean — and we make fun of each other's race all the time," he continued. "We call each other slurs all the time. We don’t get butthurt at all, nah, because we know the actual person, we know who each other are. We know that we're not trying to bring each other down."
"So what are y'all trying to get at? You're trying to prove that somebody that's not racist is racist? Nah. You don't have that power. There is no racist energy coming from this household at all."
Guzman later replied on Twitter to a user who posted a clip from his video, attempting to clarify his claims about making "racial slurs."
"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for my misuse of 'slurs.' I should have said we make fun of each others 'stereotypes,'" he said. "My friends black friends will tell me to go mow a lawn or hop the border. Out of context that seems racist asf but I know my friends mean no harm ... Let me be clear cut. I do not use the n word because it's not mine to use. My true friends of all races know that."
Ane has since issued a lengthy "formal apology" via social media, in which she chalked up her use of the word to being "a 16 year old girl in high school, trying to find my place in the world and who I was... At the time I was dating someone of African American descent and started diving deeper into the culture; I made tons of black friends, listened to music that used slurs, watched black comedians that freely used the word, and felt fully accepted by the black community. At the time, none of my friends found it offensive but I must say I also didn't fully comprehend the WEIGHT of the word."
Some of Guzman's co-stars took to social media soon after to address fans' questions about his comments.
"I know a lot of you want to hear my thoughts on what a cast member said today on IG live," Oliver Stark tweeted. "I can tell you that my opinion is there is absolutely no excuse for the use of the n word. It belongs to the Black community only and I absolutely don’t agree with it being used by anyone else under any circumstances."
Rockmond Dunbar retweeted Stark's post, adding, "As a black man this should go without saying but just to make sure people in the back understand when I say this with my whole chest: I don’t condone the s**t. I don’t like the s**t. And I’ve never been one to allow the word to be used around me by any non-black person."
"And any alleged ‘black people’ that are co-signing their non-black friends to refer to them in that way need their entire asses checked," he added. "Too much history, too much pain. Past and present. S**t is utterly unacceptable."
In response to another fan who urged followers to ask the cast how they felt about Guzman's comments, Aisha Hinds tweeted, "How I FEEL daily is a perpetual state of GRIEF. There’s sadly no version of this indefensible discourse that doesn’t exacerbate that grief. There’s legions of learned behaviors that need to be named and neutured so we don’t continue to give life to them. May we know & DO BETTER."
Guzman seemingly concluded his dialogue on the subject with a tweet sharing a link to a Black Lives Matter "How to Help" page. "I'm done with defending myself or my family to people who are as quick to judge as they are to condemn," he wrote. "Let me get back to the real topic and help out any way I can to the black community. I've already donated to 1 organization. Heres another. Please help."
He also shared another Instagram video on Monday in which he restated that he does not "condone the use of the n-word by any non-black person," but asked his critics to "keep that same energy for Cardi B, Tekashi 6ix9ine, Fat Joe, all them Latinos that been using it for years upon years and getting passes."
See more on the ongoing protests following George Floyd's death in the video below.
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