Tyler Perry in viral Oscars speech includes police in list of groups he refuses to hate — and leftists don't like that one bit

Film director Tyler Perry is making waves in the wake of his speech at this year's Academy Awards decrying hatred — including hatred of police officers.

And some leftists are fuming bigly about it.

What are the details?

In his acceptance speech Sunday for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, Perry shared with the audience that his mother taught him to "refuse hate" and to "refuse blanket judgment."

"And in this time, with all of the internet and social media and algorithms and everything that wants us to think a certain way, the 24-hour news cycle, it is my hope that all of us would teach our kids, and I want to remember: Just refuse hate. Don't hate anybody," he said.

Perry continued: "I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican, or because they are black or white or [LGBTQ]. I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian. I would hope we would refuse hate."

He added that he's dedicating his award to "anyone who wants to stand in the middle. No matter what's around the walls, stand in the middle. Because that's where healing happens, that's where conversation happens, that's where change happens. It happens in the middle."

'F*** cops'

As you might guess, more than a few leftists who caught wind of Perry's words took issue with him including police among the groups of people he refuses to hate — particularly given the social climate following deaths of black men at the hands of police in Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

• "Yikes really just slipped that cop propaganda in and thought no one would notice," one commenter said.
• "I loved the speech," another user noted. "Until he mentioned not hating cops. F*** cops."
• "Hey dips**t," another commenter told Perry. "No one chooses to be Mexican, black, Asian, or LGBTQ. They are hated for absolutely no reason except for living. Cops choose their profession and know exactly what they're getting into beforehand."
• "In Tyler Perry's world, cops are the oppressed, rather than the ones doing the oppressing," another user observed.
• "I'm with him except for 'police officers,'" another commenter said. "I hate them. I hate ALL of them. I return what I'm given. They give us hate, so I'm returning the hate."
• "They kill POCs and White people un-proportionately too casually, and it goes unpunished," another user declared. "I don't give a f*** about them feeling 'oppressed,' excuse my French."
• "Once again, Malcolm X was right in 1963 about regarding these unconscious idiots as activists for our oppressed community," another commenter said.
• "Nah man...a previous winner highlighted the cops kill 3ppl a day on average, of which the majority are black and brown," another user wrote. "He said in his [speech] to stop killing us. Was Tyler Perry not paying attention?"

The latter commenter presumably was referring to the words of director Trayvon Free after he won, with director Martin Desmond Roe, Best Live-Action Short for "Two Distant Strangers," which is about police brutality.

Free in his acceptance speech said, "Today, the police will kill three people, and tomorrow, the police will kill three people, and the day after that, police will kill three people, because on average, the police in America every day kill three people, which amounts to about 1,000 people per year," Deadline reported.

He added that "those people happen to disproportionately be black people," the outlet said.

Anything else?

Perry in his acceptance speech also recalled an interaction with a homeless woman some years back as he was leaving a studio he was using for production.

He said he reached into his pocket to give her some money, but she said, "Excuse me, sir, do you have any shoes?" Perry said the woman's request "stopped me cold because I remember being homeless and having one pair of shoes, and they were bent over at the heels."

So Perry said he brought the woman into the studio's wardrobe department, where the woman chose a pair of shoes — and then looked up with tears in her eyes.

"She said, 'Thank you, Jesus — my feet are off the ground,'" Perry recalled her saying, adding that she also said she was concerned Perry would hate her for asking for shoes.

"I'm like, 'How can I hate you when I used to be you?'" he shared, adding that he couldn't possibly hate her, particularly when his mother — who taught him to refuse to hate — went through so much heartache in the the Jim Crow South and during the civil rights movement.