Ed Sheeran has been accused of displaying "white tears" by Great British Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain, a rebuke that followed his emotional apology delivered on-stage the previous night, September 19, as reported by the Daily Express. The A Team hitmaker has come under sustained criticism from fans since tour organizers dropped his opening act, Macklemore, for weaving "Free Palestine" messaging into his sets.
In a show of solidarity, Sheeran's own backing band together with his remaining support acts walked away from the tour, forcing him to perform solo in Philadelphia on Saturday, even though he had previously insisted he wanted to stay "apolitical" throughout the controversy. Confronting the matter directly before his audience, he said, "I've had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I'm so, so sorry," the Express reported.
Turning to the Middle East conflict itself, Sheeran labeled the Hamas onslaught against Israel on October 7 at the Nova Music Festival "horrific," remarking that it "compounded centuries of Jewish pain," before adding, "What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate."
Yet Hussain remained unmoved by the performance, particularly after Sheeran characterized the ordeal as the "worst week of his life" and spoke of feeling abandoned by friends and family.
The Bake Off star subsequently posted a clip from therapist Megan Cooper to her social media, in which Cooper told viewers, "We're all waking up to Ed Sheeran's statement on stage, and I'm not going to go into what he said, but I do want to focus on one specific point.
"For those of us in white bodies, we need to understand and educate ourselves on white tears. White tears (are) a cultural tactic using emotion, consciously or unconsciously, to deflect accountability, to gain sympathy, and to center self in conflict and challenge, particularly during discussions around racism and oppression."
Cooper continued by noting that in this instance "not only does emotion meet whiteness, but it also meets patriarchy. "So what we have (are) not just tears, it's power. If the tears of Palestinians and black and brown and indigenous communities carried as much gravity, genocide would not happen."
Cooper went on to argue that those "in white bodies" ought to "educate and inform ourselves so that we don't replicate systems of harm whilst we are trying to dismantle them".
Hussain posted the clip for her roughly one million Instagram followers to see, the Express noted, but she offered no personal remarks of her own.
