Watch: Xavier Woods Gives Heartfelt Message About Race In America

Xavier Woods of The New Day has been out of action now for several months, since late October to [...]

By Ryan Droste

Xavier Woods of The New Day has been out of action now for several months, since late October to be specific, with an Achilles injury. The reports at the time stated the injury would keep him out of action for anywhere from six months to one year. The absence has allowed him to devote more time to his gaming career while his New Day partners Big E and Kofi Kingston continue to reign as the WWE SmackDown Tag Team Champions.

However, despite being away from the ring, he's been able to stay in the public eye through his YouTube gaming channel, Up Up Down Down. Probably the most well-known gamer in the wrestling industry, Woods appeared this week on TwitchRivals and spoke about racial unrest in American today.

You can check out the video below, as well as a full transcript of Woods' full, heartfelt comments.

"My dad told me when I was much younger — when I was a tiny child — he told me there was going to be people that don't like me purely because of the way that I look. Purely because of the color of my skin. And, unfortunately, there's not always a lot that you can do to change someone's mind about you. So he explained that to me, I didn't really understand, I didn't get it as a kid. Then, throughout my life he always made sure that I understood I had to work twice as hard as some people in order to get treated the same. In some situations, not even the same.

"When you do everything you possibly can, you educate yourself, you learn to be an athlete, you learn to play an instrument, you're in AP classes. You're doing everything you can and you're doing it because you want to because you want to learn these things. You want to understand these things, but then at its core — I realized through conversation the other day — because of the way things are, my entire life I've had to spend trying to figure out how to present myself as non-threatening.

"If you haven't been in that situation or understood something like that — it's a lot. It's a lot because even though someone might hate me, the onus is on me to deal with it. Not on them. There's no pressure on them to deal with their hate and their pain. While in my house, as a child, I had to have this talk, I had to get this talk, my parents had to give me this information. Not so I could be smarter, not so that I could do better, it's so I could stay alive. That was the first goal in our house. Survive amongst people who might not want you to survive."

H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcript.

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