Who is lilclaydo? TikToker compares anti-Asian attacks to BLM, Internet says he's 'gaslighting his own people'
There has reportedly been an increase in hate crimes against Asians in the US since the onset of the pandemic, according to reports. Even recently, on Thursday, February 25, an Asian man was allegedly stabbed in the back by a Brooklyn resident.
It has been reported that the New York Police Department data found that anti-Asian motivated hate crimes have increased by 1,900% in 2020, which includes attacks on Asian-owned businesses. It is in reference to this increase that TikToker @lilclaydo put out a video addressing members of the Asian community who have not spoken out about this.
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The TikToker said in the video. “To all my Asians not spreading awareness about the Asian hate crimes going on, where y’all at? Where did y’all go?” he asked. However, the majority of his followers objected to the TikToker's comparison between the rise in hate crimes against Asians and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The reason why many believed that such comparisons were harmful was that it was believed to perpetuate anti-Blackness and was not very helpful comparisons of racism between the Black, Asian-American and the Pacific Islander community. The video by @lilclaydo has received over 250,000 views and 11,000 comments in just six days.
The video also went viral on Twitter where it received more than 1 million views. The video was debated on the platform as well where users flooded it with arguments, GIFs and even memes.
One of the users who shared the video wrote, "save the think pieces. i said what i said. this could’ve easily been an educated infomercial type video genuinely explaining the current issues in his community instead he decided to incorporate BLM to gaslight his own ppl. no relevancy to the topic at hand."
save the think pieces. i said what i said. this could’ve easily been an educated infomercial type video genuinely explaining the current issues in his community instead he decided to incorporate BLM to gaslight his own ppl😭 no relevancy to the topic at hand
— 5✮ DOLL خ (@chancexclip) February 24, 2021
Sue Yun, a digital creator on Instagram, created a graphic that said, “Don’t use anti-Asian hate crimes as an excuse to push anti-Black racism.” In a long caption about the problems that she has with the response to hate crimes against Asians, she wrote, "Don’t use these hate crimes to push your 'All Lives Matter' narrative. 'All Lives Matter' was only created in direct response to Black Lives Matter, to disregard and distract from anti-Black racism. Boooo."
She added, "I’ve seen some people perpetuate the model minority myth to 'defend' the Asian community. 'Asians are a good minority! They contribute to society!' This clearly implies there are 'bad' marginalized groups that don’t contribute to society, and that is deeply problematic."
"Several suspects in recent anti-Asian hate crimes have been Black men, but it is absolutely abhorrent to generalize the entire Black community and further pit our two communities against each other. You cannot fight racism with racism." Similarly, many others also responded to lilclaydo to say that his video needed to be taken down.
In reference to another hate crime on an Asian individual, mayor Bill de Blasio said, "Even as we're sounding the alarm and calling for people to band together to stop hate, we had a horrible incident yesterday, a horrible act of violence against an Asian-American man — out of nowhere, just pure hatred."