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On Thursday, August 3, actress Jennifer Garner faced severe backlash on social media, with netizens accusing her of racial microaggression after a clipping from a 2017 chat show resurfaced online. The footage in question comes from an episode titled, My Dinner Party: My American Experience, from the now-canceled Netflix talk show, Chelsea, hosted by comedian Chelsea Handler.
In the short video that resurfaced online, Handler is seen asking her guests:
“Let’s talk about our families [maybe] first. Where we and our parents came from.”
Following this she prompts Regina King to initiate the conversation, to which King replied:
“I grew up here in L.A., born and bred.”
While she goes on to talk more about how proud she is of her Los Angeles upbringing, Jennifer Garner, who was sitting across the table is suddenly seen interjecting her with the question:
“But do you know where your ancestors are from?”
Netizens have now expressed anger at Garner for interrupting an African American woman who was already talking about her upbringing and asking her an “unnecessary” question about where she’s really from. In fact, some have deemed it as racist and a form of microaggression. One user even tweeted:
Jennifer Garner slammed online for her racist remark in an old chat show
The one-minute-long clipping is from episode 24 of the second season of Chelsea, in which the host had invited over her celebrity friends, including Jennifer Garner, Regina King, Rob Riggle, Mary McCormack, and Dan Savage to discuss topics like their roots, patriotism, religion, and modern America's complexities, all over a relaxed dinner party on camera.
However, when Chelsea Handler asked her guests about their families, themselves, and their parents, she specifically turned to African American actress-director Regina King to begin the chat, to which the latter confirmed that she is from Los Angeles where she was born and raised. She continued:
“I’m one of the few people that are born and bred in L.A. I think that’s a cool thing, and I wear it on my chest very proudly, because so many people say, ‘Oh, L.A. is this, and L.A. is that’ – and I’m like, ‘No, you’re not from L.A., so you don’t really know it.’”
Before King could continue, she is suddenly interrupted by Jennifer Garner who asks her whether she knew where her ancestors were from. Regina King is instantly seen responding to Garner’s abrupt question by saying:
“Well, yeah – we are part of the triangle slave trade. And from Sierra Leonne, Liberia, and Senegal. But my parents are both from the south and met each other here.”
As soon as the clipping of this conversation resurfaced online after six years (first shared on TikTok), people online have been putting Jennifer Garner under fire. While some have pointed out how she gave a “cold” and “white woman stare” to King, others hinted that Garner’s alleged racist nature may be the reason why she split for her former husband Ben Affleck. Here are some of the criticisms faced by Jennifer Garner online.
What’s interesting is that some people who have claimed to have watched the entire episode pointed out that Jennifer’s question made sense in context as the episode was titled My American Experience.
However, others pulling down the Catch Me If You Can actress have reminded them how it was only a Black woman who got asked by a White woman about her ancestry, which was not just racist but “distasteful and rude.”
So far, the viral clipping has been watched over 13 million times on Twitter alone. However, neither Garner nor King has commented on the incident yet.
