Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively Donate $200,000 To NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Celebrity couple Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund last week, according to a statement posted on both of their Instagram accounts.

“We’ve never had to worry about preparing our kids for different rules of law or what might happen if we’re pulled over in the car,” the post said. “We don’t know what it’s like to experience that life day in and day out. We can’t imagine feeling that kind of fear and anger. We’re ashamed that in the past we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is.”

Their post comes after several days of protests following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died on May 25 while being arrested in Minneapolis by a white police officer who was kneeling on his neck. That police officer, Derek Chauvin, has since been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

The post discusses how Reynolds and Lively have raised their children and taught them about systemic racism.

“We’ve been teaching our children differently than the way our parents taught us,” the post said. “We want to educate ourselves about other people’s experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it… especially our own complicity. We talk about our bias, blindness and our own mistakes which have led us to deeply examine who we are and who we want to become. They’ve led us to huge avenues of education.”

“We’re committed to raising our kids so they never grow up feeding this insane pattern and so they’ll do their best to never inflict pain on another being consciously or unconsciously. It’s the least we can do to not only honor just George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, but all the black men and women who have been killed when a camera wasn’t rolling.”

In the statement, the couple says the donation “is just a start,” pledging to “stay educated and vote in every local election.”

“We want to know the positions of school board nominees, sheriffs, mayors, councilpersons. We want to know their positions on justice. But mainly, we want to use our privilege and platform to be an ally. And to play a part in easing the pain for so many who feel as though this grand experiment is failing them.”

Other celebrities, including Don Cheadle, Janelle Monáe, Kehlani and Steve Carell, have also donated to help the George Floyd protesters, and have shared links to fundraisers to their millions of social media followers.