Nick Cannon is "ready to put his life on the line" to fight the Black Lives Matter cause amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
The television presenter admits he struggles with his immune system and so should really be shielding during the current health crisis, but he wants to go out and support the protests after George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was murdered by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis.
He said: "I’ve almost lost my life to health concerns many times, so I’ve kind of always been a little bit more careful when it comes to my immune system than most. But in a matter like this … it’s so much more demanding of our energy. It’s pretty easy to follow rules, the rules of quarantine. And it’s frustrating cause people are losing jobs, frustrating cause people are not being able to spend time with loved ones. But when you got to step out there and protest and speak and stand for your people in the same way that our ancestors did, being on that front line is a little more demanding. So it takes one’s spirit to say, ‘What is more important: my own health concerns, or the concerns of humanity?’ And that’s where I commend the people who are peacefully protesting and putting their lives on the line."
And Nick insists there is "nothing more important" in the world than this for himself, his family and his community.
Speaking to Access Hollywood, he added: "I’m just as hurt and pissed off as I am about George Floyd as I am about Mike Brown. About Sandra Bland. About so many – Philando Castile, so, so many … the laundry list of names. Even in the same week as George Floyd, there was four other police killings. Obviously this one was recorded on camera, and I think to see a white man kneeling on the neck of a black man as he takes his last breath, and the white man has his hands in his pockets, so cavalier in a crisis – that we have now normalised trauma. You know what I mean? [That] we see public lynching daily on cycle on a feed, is something we can’t normalise. And it hurts my heart, and I cry at night, man. It’s hard to even wake up every day knowing that we have to get back into this fight. But we’re going to do it. We’re going to do it. I’m ready to put my life on the line for this, because there’s nothing more important to my community, nothing more important to my family. Nothing more important to me, than to evoke change in a real way."