Kerry Washington Delivers Moving GLAAD Awards Speech
GLAAD Vanguard award recipient Kerry Washington delivered a moving and empowering acceptance speech Saturday night as she spoke on equality at the annual awards held at the Beverly Hilton.
The 38-year-old Scandal actress was presented with the Vanguard Award by Ellen DeGeneres.
“Being an ally means a great deal to me and so I am gonna say some stuff,” she began. “I might be preaching to the choir but I’m gonna say it, not just for us, because on Monday morning, people are gonna click a link to hear what that woman from Scandal said on that awards show. So I think some stuff needs to be said.”
The actress moved through her speech promoting equality and making a call for more representation of the LGBT community in Hollywood.
“Having your story told as a woman, as a person of color, as a lesbian, as a trans person or as any member of any disenfranchised community is sadly often still a radical idea,” she said. “There is so much power in storytelling and there is enormous power in inclusive storytelling, in inclusive representations.”
She concluded her impassioned speech with a call to action for marginalized communities to support each other.
“We must see each other, all of us and we must see ourselves, all of us and we have to continue to be bold and break new ground until this is how it is, until we are no longer ‘firsts’ and ‘exceptions’ and ‘rare’ and ‘unique.’ In the real world, being an ‘other’ is the norm. In the real world, the only norm is uniqueness and our media must reflect that. Thank you GLAAD for fighting the good fight. God bless you.”
At the end of her speech, she received a standing ovation from the cheering crowd.
The GLAAD Media Awards honor the media and its members for their “fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the LGBT community and the issues that affect their lives.”
Watch the full speech below!
(Photo Credit: Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
