Chrissy Teigen has revealed her experience with what she believes Black men in the United States go through on a daily basis involving a confrontation she believes was underlined by racial animus while she was with her husband, John Legend.
In an interview with Marie Claire, the 34-year-old model and cookbook author recalled the decade-old incident where they were tailed and confronted by two White, “neighborhood-watch-type” men while they were on their way to the home of John’s godmother in Virginia.
“We were in a nicer neighborhood at night, driving slowly, looking for John’s godmother’s home. These two guys were in a pickup truck slowly tailing us, flashing their lights and trying to speak to us,” she said. “When we pulled over, they were like, ‘What are you guys looking for?’ and we gave them the address. They literally said, ‘Get your asses out of here!’ and proceeded to follow us all the way into her driveway. They got out of the car and stared at us as we knocked on the door and went inside. It was a terrible, scary experience.”
The expectant mother, said though the incident got her shaken up and sobbing, John wasn’t peeved and just brushed it off as that wasn’t his first experience.
She explained:
“That was my first taste of seeing what happens to Black men everyday,” Teigen tearfully said. “It was horrifying and could have gone wrong so quickly. I was sobbing afterward for hours, and I noticed John wasn’t emotional about it. Seeing that he wasn’t very thrown by it was really upsetting because he obviously had experienced it before.”
Teigen also spoke about how racism in the United States has become so overt in recent times and blamed Donald Trump for enabling that environment.
“People are very confident in their ways of being open about their racism because they have the backing views of the president,” she claimed. “It’s become such a hurtful, weird presidency for so many Americans, and I’m going to fight to get this person out of office because I can’t live another four years with this kind of hatred boiling through America.”
Teigen, who already has two children with John, 4-year-old Luna and two-year-old Miles, also spoke about having “that talk” with the kids about racism.
“There are books that I read when I became a mom that would explain to them hard and traumatic situations. But it’s really hard to teach them about their privilege; there are no books for that. But regardless of money or status, they’re always going to have their skin color,” she said.
“When it comes to them being treated differently because of the color of their skin, I’m going to look to John for a lot of help with that because while they are Asian and white too, their skin color is Black. We just try to talk to them like little adults, saying it in words they’ll understand, making it known that it’s very serious, and letting them ask as many questions as they need.”
