Kerry Washington To Host 'American Son' Twitter & Instagram Events Amid 'Resurgence'

Actor Kerry Washington is certainly amongst the people who doesn't; stand back when it comes to making a point and recently she spoke about the "resurgence" of her Netflix film American Son in light of the worldwide protests against racial injustice when she virtually visited Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday.

Based on the Broadway play of the same name, the 2019 film follows a black mother and white father as they desperately look for their 18-year-old son when he doesn't come home.

"It's every parent's worst nightmare of wondering where your teenage kid is with the added layer, the added complexity, that so many of us are understanding now of being a black parent and knowing that your kid isn't just up against knucklehead adolescent behavior, but up against systems of, you know, racist institutions that put your kid's life at risk," Washington explained of the film. 

"The film is really so close to my heart," she said. "Because there's been a huge resurgence of people watching it and saying, 'Oh, now I get it' or 'I have so many more questions,' we're going to do a live tweet."

The Twitter event will take place on Thursday, June 12. The watch live event will be followed by an Instagram Live conversation between Washington and African American Policy Forum founder Kimberle Crenshaw, who helped create the Say Her Name campaign.

"Kimberle and I are gonna do a discussion about American Son, talk about how people can be part of the solution [and] raise money for AAPF and Say Her Name," she said. The discussion will also educate viewers on the characters in the film including the titular son, as well as "a lot of the women that haven't been mentioned" like Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor, Washington said.

Earlier in the appearance, Washington gave suggestions on how to teach kids about racism.

Noting that white privilege allows people to learn about racism, she said that black families "don't have the privilege of ignoring what's going on and pretending that it's not happening."

"Kids are introduced to race at Black History Month or in the context of change makers like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks," she said. "I think it's really important that we start to introduce the idea of race with a black history that begins before teaching kids about what black people were told they couldn't do."

Washington shared that she wants kids to learn about Maasai warriors, the kingdoms of Ghana, Queen Nefertiti and the Egyptian pyramids.