You are not Hattie McDaniel, Nick Cannon

Nick Cannon became a millionaire from his recordings and movies. His net worth is an estimated $50 million.

But all that material wealth is not enough. Cannon wants praise. Cannon wants the world to see him not as an entertainer but as the Martin Luther King Jr. of movies and rap.

Most of all, Cannon wants an apology from his industry for slights he never suffered.

Cannon said, “I believe we should force the Academy to apologize for how they’ve treated several communities…Let’s go back to Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to ever receive and Academy Award, and she was forced to sit in the back and be segregated from the rest of the Gone With The Wind cast. Did we receive an apology for that?…We’ve allowed the Academy to grow since then and we did #OscarsSoWhite, all those things. And that was just a couple of years ago. But we’re allowing them to grow. We didn’t force them to apologize…If we’re going to start bringing up people’s past, then so has the Academy.”

So a fellow who was born 16 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- who never had to sit in the back of the bus -- who never had to attend a segregated school -- who never had to take an intelligence test to vote -- now wants his white contemporaries to apologize to him for acts on others that his white friends never committed.

Hollywood owes him nothing. Hollywood has apologized in deed. All of America has by opening opportunities to all.

In fact, he is Hollywood. Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and every person of color working in entertainment now is part of Hollywood. The chitlins circuit folded decades ago. Sure, there is BET but no one is stuck there.

That chip on Cannon's shoulder is cultural appropriation because he is stealing it from a woman he never met and a time he never lived in. He is no more entitled to her legacy than I am.

78 years ago a black woman made history as an Oscar winner (and earlier as the first black singer to perform on radio). At a time when she was a second-class citizen in her homeland, Hollywood reached out to declare her one of its best.

They were clumsy? So what else is new?

McDaniel, rightly, was proud of her work, and said, "I loved Mammy. I think I understood her because my own grandmother worked on a plantation not unlike Tara."

The people who made "Gone With the Wind" are gone, save Olivia deHavilland, who at 102 is fighting her own battle with a studio, in this case FX, for misappropriating her life.

Even if everyone were left to apologize, who would they apologize to? Miss McDaniel died 66 years ago.

If Cannon wants to help, he should stop being a black actor and start being an actor. I've seen one or two of his movies. #OscarsSoWhite is beneath him.

Instead, #CannonSoOppressed that he has to appropriate a life long gone. It is cosplay without having to dress up like Mammy.

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