One teen had her Twitter account suspended after posting a hilarious response to Donald Trump‘s shocking win in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Painting her face with white concealer as she sarcastically denounced all things Black (because after all, that’s exactly what America did when they elected hate-monger Trump for president), Jane Oranika embodied our exact response in her short, now-viral clip. See above.
Twelve hours later, her Twitter account was suspended. The 19-year-old told Buzzfeed users were accusing her of “Whiteface.”
Here’s how it all went down, according to the site:
Oranika, a student and musician, told BuzzFeed News that on the night of the election she was at work. She explained that she and her colleagues, who are all black, had a running joke: “If Trump is elected, we have nothing to worry about because we are caucasian.” It’s a reference to a “Joanne the Scammer” sketch.
When she got home, she posted the video to make her colleagues laugh and had no idea it would get such a huge response. Oranika said her usual engagement on Twitter consists of tweeting her friends and posting song covers because she’s a musician. “The only reason I had a political tweet was because it was election night,” she added.
She said “I didn’t know how to feel about the video going viral. I didn’t know if it was blowing up for positive or negative reasons.”
The site continues:
“Some people were saying it was similar to ‘blackface’, they called it ‘whiteface’,” Oranika said. “It was mostly strangers and they were clearly Trump supporters – it was in their bios… I didn’t take it to heart.” But she said she is “glad” some people noticed and understood it was satire.
Oranika says she found out her account was suspended through her cousin, adding she was not offended by Twitter’s decision:
“When I tried to tweet it wouldn’t let me but I wasn’t offended by it [being suspended], I thought that if a lot of people had reported me… it was pretty responsible for a media platform to take whatever down as they investigate it,” she said.
“It didn’t bother me as much but I was like, Wow, people are really upset about a joke… [and] will go out their way to take it down. Then I had to contact them [Twitter] and appeal my account suspension twice, because the first time it didn’t go through.”
Oranika said when she received the explanation email from Twitter, she found it “bizarre”. She went on to say: “My account was the exact same when I returned… I have yet to find anything that was taken down.”
It seems the only image that was removed was Oranika’s header that showed two people engaging in a sexual act. Read more over at Buzzfeed and tweet us your thoughts here.
SOURCE: Buzzfeed
Teen’s Twitter Account Suspended Following ‘Whiteface’ Accusations was originally published on globalgrind.com
