Vanity Fair critic Austin Collins and Harper’s Web editor Violet Lucca decided to make racist jokes about Blue Ivy Carter’s Afrocentric features in her NYE photo with her mother Beyonce and rapper Megan Thee Stallion.
It takes an extraordinary amount of headassery and misogynoir to make fun of a 7-year-old black girl, but it seems Collins and Lucca are lacking in neither.
Here are screenshots of the now-deleted tweets:
Blue Ivy has been the subject of racist attacks since she was much younger. First, it was insults over her kinky hair when she was barely three years old. Now, grown-ups are dissing her for looking Afrocentric like her father Jay-Z.
The worst part about this is that the diss is coming from members of two oppressed groups; black men and white women. These two groups have a fun time teaming up and using their race and their gender to put down black women. And sadly enough, even a little child is not exempt from their oppression.
The fact that a lot of people hold these kinds of thoughts is evidence of the deeply-rooted self-hatred that has eaten into the black community; so much so that they only consider black women with light skin, “good” hair, and Eurocentric features as beautiful.
There is no justification for using a little black girl as a target for colourism and anti-blackness. It truly is a disgrace that people that have been given a platform would use it to bully a little child for being her black self.
They have both issued half-assed apologies. Lucca continued to play the victim and has been severely dragged for it. But it sure would be great to have their platforms snatched out from under them.
Fortunately, the Carters have the means to do it. Look what happened to 106&Park after they made fun of Blue’s hair…