Adrienne Banfield Norris let her feelings be known about having Olivia Jade Giannulli on “Red Table Talk.”
Banfield Norris appears on the Facebook Watch series with her daughter and granddaughter, Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith.
Tuesday’s episode featured Giannulli, a social media influencer who goes professionally by her first and middle names, discussing the college admissions scandal that resulted in her parents, actress Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli, being sent to prison.
Before Olivia Jade even appeared at the table, Pinkett Smith said she, her mother and her daughter “all had very different feelings about it.”
Banfield Norris chimed in, “I fought it tooth and nail.”
“I just found it really ironic that she chose three Black women to reach out to for her redemption story,” she said. “I feel like here we are, a white woman coming to Black women for support when we don’t get the same from them. It’s bothersome to me on so many levels.”
“Her being here is the epitome of white privilege to me.”
Jade’s parents admitted to paying $500,000 to aid their two daughters in getting admitted to the University of Southern California and the couple pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges earlier this year.
The 21 year old came on “Red Table Talk” to break her silence about what happened.
Smith-Pinkett asked her mother to share with Jade her feelings about the appearance.
“I think for me it’s like there is so much violent dehumanization that the Black community has to go through on a daily basis,” Banfield Norris said. “There is so much devastation, particularly this year, 2020 with the pandemic ,and everything brought to the table about how there is so much inequality and inequity, that when you come to the table with something like this, it’s like, ‘Child, please.’”
Jade understood and Banfield Norris said she was “glad because what I am hearing from you is that there’s an interest and a desire to learn and figure out where you fit into the world and what your role is to make a difference.”
“I didn’t come on here to like try and win people over and say, ‘I really need people to like me,’” Jade said. “I just want to apologize for contributing to these social inequalities even though I didn’t realize it at the time.”
