Terry Crews Addresses People Questioning His Wife’s Racial Identity: ‘She Was Raised in Black Culture’ [Video]

Terry Crews is standing up for his wife, Rebecca King-Crews, against people who criticize her racial identity.

During his conversation with Shannon Sharpe on Club Shay Shay, the actor was asked about people questioning his wife’s racial identity. According to Crews, his wife was raised in a Black household by a Black mother and a white father in Gary, Indiana, a predominately Black city.

“She’s black, yes, Black momma white daddy and been raised like that, but again, just cause she don’t have that kind of look, her momma is Black,” Crews said. “She’s from Gary, Indiana, bruh. My wife was Miss Gary, Indiana 1984. And Gary, Indiana is like Flint. Ain’t nothing but Black people. And she was raised in Black culture, so it wasn’t like she was raised in the outskirts.”

When Sharpe asked how he’s been able to deal with the drama through 40 years of being with her, Crews stated it’s something that’s always going to be around, but that he and his wife are used to it.

“This is what I admire about her,” Crews said. “It never bothered her; she was like, ‘I love Black people, and even if some feel that I’m white, I understand it.’… Wow, and it’s deep to me.”

He added, “That’s the way I had to start thinking because I would always get angry. But to watch her, the way she dealt with things peacefully, like ‘I’m not gonna go there. You know what? That’s trauma that they had to deal with, and I understand it. But I love them anyway.’”

Crews met his wife when he was a sophomore at Western Michigan and she was a music minister at a local church. They got married in 1989 and share five children and one grandchild. Elsewhere in his conversation with Sharpe, Crews reflected on the time he fought his father for hitting his mother.

“That was the darkest day,” Crews said. “You got to understand the context of that situation is he had just hit my mother. I wasn’t there, but I got a phone call. ‘Oh, your daddy just hit your mama.’ Now, I’m a grown-ass man, post-NFL, I already played the league. Like, ‘Hey man, what? I’m 245. I ain’t five, you ain’t talking to a five-year-old boy.’”

You can watch Terry’s full interview below.