Nicole Arbour defends her tweet about being 'sick' of people who are 'mad at slavery'
Canadian YouTube star Nicole Arbour has found herself in the middle of a controversy ever since she brought out her version of Childish Gambino‘s powerful video for his song 'This Is America'.
Nicole was soon slammed by people for her parody of the video, which she had called the women's edit.
Gambino's song and video was hailed universally as a searing indictment of modern day America and its racist past and present. It also took a shot at the prevalent gun culture in the country.
So it came as no surprise that many took umbrage to Arbour's version, with one of the fans reminding her about a tweet she had made earlier this month about slavery.
"I'm so sick of people mad at slavery," Nicole noted in a tweet which she wrote on May 4 but had deleted later.
"It's the past, we weren't there. We didn't do it. But what we CAN do is fix economic slavery. Focus on the now." While the singer would not have anticipated negative reactions towards her video, she did believe it was right to justify the words she used in the tweet.
"I can't fix the past, but issues now, we all have a chance at so let’s refocus," she wrote on Sunday (May 13).
"I wanna see more movies with black women CEOs and normalizing excellence for the next generation to see, less black ppl in prison, and police retraining."
However, fans were still not convinced with her argument.
"One way to 'refocus' would be to allow historically disenfranchised and marginalized people to shine, rather than create comedic conjecture that trivializes the plight of said people. Why even make this in the first place if you actually “empathize”?" one fan noted.
Another tweeted, "Nah that tweet spoke loud and clear. You don’t understand that the effects of slavery are still alive today. If you want to see black people progress, you can’t forget our history. The reason why it’s so hard for us to progress is BECAUSE of our history."
Meanwhile, there were some who were not ready to let go of the fact that Nicole tried to make fun of a song which spoke volumes about the life of people of color.
"You can't fix the past, but you also have no problem co-opting the present and centering yourself in someone else's narrative. Stay in your lane. No one needs your input," one Twitter user wrote.
While another added, "You are so problematic and awful, and you don’t even know it. It’s really sad but I'm glad social media is able to call you out on this. #DoBetter."
