*Folks gon’ learn that Black Twitter is not to be messed with. Black Twitter ain’t no punk. LA Times tried it, and they failed.
The mainstream media generally ignores the interests of the Black community, choosing to focus only on the negative. Black Twitter formed as a means for Black social media enthusiasts to collect, share and oftentimes spar about topics and issues that have us feeling a certain way. While other major newspapers have observed Black Twitter from the sideline, and stealing crumbs to use in their leading stories, the LA Times is the first to hire a full-time reporter dedicated to decoding the enigma that is Black Twitter.
The LA Times hired reporter Dexter Thomas to infiltrate Black Twitter and provide imaginative articles about the current rants from the urban underworld. However, LA Times found itself on the receiving end of outrage Thursday for Dexter’s story suggesting that ‘Black Twitter Sounds Like White Twitter.’
You know Black Twitter was having none of that, so wigs had to be snatched.
Thomas believes Black Twitter might not be “a unified collective of progressive people who enjoy jokes and social justice,” as it has sometimes been characterized.
“Black Twitter, like every other online community, is a diverse and tangled mess of opinions. We would be doing the community an injustice if we pretended otherwise. In other words, Black Twitter looks an awful lot like White Twitter,” Thomas wrote.
As transgender rights activist Janet Mock explained in a video essay, Tyga is being shamed for allegedly loving an “unnatural” woman and Isabella is being shamed for existing. Not everyone doing this was black. But it was Black Twitter, the active community on the platform that is most in tune with hip-hop music culture, that led the charge.
Later in the article, he addresses some of the similarities and differences between “White Twitter” and Black Twitter:
And just like White Twitter, Black Twitter does have a vocal minority that actively pushes back against all kinds of bias. On Sunday, Robert Jones Jr., who tweets as @SonofBaldwin, wrote a series of angry tweets about Black Twitter members who “support” Bill Cosby, despite the release of a 2005 deposition in which Cosby admitted to obtaining drugs to give to women he wanted to have sex with.
This is exactly what Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, has been fighting for the last two years. Last year, she wrote that many people only seem to pay attention to certain “charismatic black men,” leaving “sisters, queer, trans, and disabled [black] folk [to] take up roles in the background.”
Naturally, Black Twitter’s reaction to the piece was to call for the guards! Off with his head! Below are some of the reactions, read more over at The Wrap.
You get hired to cover #BlackTwitter and the first thing you write is how it sounds like “White Twitter.” Wut. @dexdigi, that was a fail.
