Amber Heard would like to make two things very clear:
1. She is not racist.
2. The country has a major problem with racism.
The actress found herself at the center of a controversy related to this pair of issues on Tuesday, following a Tweet she wrote in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) setting up a road block near her home.
This is what the 32-year old star wrote shortly after midnight today:
“Just heard there’s an ICE checkpoint in hollywood, a few blocks from where I live. Everyone better give their housekeepers, nannies and landscapers a ride home tonight,” Tweeted Heard.
Her point here, of course, was that many housekeepers, nannies and landscapers are undocumented immigrants and that ICE may detain and deport them.
Is she wrong? Probably not, as a sort of extreme generalization.
But we can see why the Tweet caused some uproar, can’t you?
“I can see where you were going but somewhere along the way you took a wrong turn. Delete this sis,” one social media wrote.
Heard did delete the post, but she didn’t apologize for it.
Instead, she simply made the same point in a different way.
“With this human rights crisis being so politicized, it is hard to make a simple statement w/out it being used to distract from the real issues,” she explained, adding:
“Its hard for everyone to not be negatively affected by this subject n some way.”
Heard, of course, is talking about the ongoing debate over immigration, which has been spurred on by the separation of children from their parents at the border.
She later added:
“Checkpoints on your home streets….Is this the ‘great’ America we’re aiming for?” Heard wondered on Twitter as well, 10 minutes after she published her incendiary tweet.
“Raids, fences and police-state like checkpoints don’t feel like the ‘land of the free’ our immigrant ancestors built.”
Heard shared a slew of photos on her Instagram page last week while attending a #KeepFamiliesTogether rally in Marcelino Serna Port of Entry in Texas, her home state.
One image of the actress depicts her sporting a sign that read:
“Apartheid was legal. Holocaust was legal. Legality is a matter of power, not justice.”
She was joined at similar protests around the country by such celebrities as Lena Dunham, Joshua Jackson, Connie Britton, Evan Rachel Wood and Sia.
Speaking to BuzzFeed, Heard – who was born and raised in Austin – burst into tears.
She takes this issue extremely seriously and very personally.
“I was literally and figuratively raised by and with immigrants in my home and heart and life,” she told the website.
Heard, meanwhile, split from Elon Musk last summer, several months after she finalized a very messy divorce from Johnny Depp.