If you’ve been on social media at all in the past few days, then you probably know that a lot of people have a lot of thoughts about what happened to George Floyd.
Cheyenne Floyd of Teen Mom OG is one of those people.
If you’re not familiar with this awful story, please take some time to go look at the details.
But if you’d prefer a quick rundown, George Floyd was a black man who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis after being suspected of using counterfeit money at a grocery store.
A video of this has been all over the internet, and it’s extremely disturbing to see — an officer put his knee on the back of George’s neck as he told them he couldn’t breathe.
Police have claimed they used that kind of force (which the mayor of Minneapolis confirmed wasn’t something that they’re permitted to do) because he was resisting arrest, but new footage from a nearby surveillance camera proves that wasn’t true.
People are outraged over this story, and rightfully so.
And last night, Cheyenne, like so many others, took to social media to express some of her feelings on the matter.
“Being black cannot be a death sentence,” she tweeted, adding a “George Floyd” hashtag, and of course a “Black Lives Matter” one as well.
“Dear Black Men,” she added, “You are worthy. You are valuable. You are kings.”
A few hours later, she got back online, writing “I couldn’t sleep.. I cried just thinking of the conversations we will have to have with Baaz,” who is her nephew.
“Teaching him how to navigate this world as a black man .. it breaks my heart.”
A little while later, she revealed that although her statements were heartfelt and true and completely unproblematic, she got some hateful responses.
A few of those critical replies remain — she got an “All lives matter” comment on one, because of course she did.
And in her tweet directed towards black men, someone replied with “Except for the ones that use events like this as an excuse to steal sh-t and burn down buildings.”
But it turns out that those weren’t the only comments she received.
“The amount of ignorance and racism on my recent post is beyond me,” Cheyenne began.
“I’ve been told because I have a platform I should stay neutral,” she continued. “In the last hour I’ve been called a n—-r, a c-nt, monkey, animal and black bitch because I spoke up.”
“The world we live in sickens me.”
“Lastly,” she added, “stop telling me Cory’s mom is white and I should be more sensitive about what I post because of his white side.”
“I KNOW she’s white but if Cory was pulled over or targeted by the police all they will see is a BLACK MAN.”
“You think they are gonna stop to ask if he’s mixed?” she asked. “NO.”
There are so many things wrong with all of this, it’s hard to know where to start.
It’s reprehensible that she’d get hate for any of this, and obviously those racial slurs are never OK for any reason.
Also how wild is it that she’s talking about all of this and multiple people took the time to tell her be careful about what she says because Cory Wharton’s mom is white? Like that has anything to do with anything?
Like we said, we’re not seeing any of those negative comments now, so it seems like Twitter actually stepped up to stop the hate speech or Cheyenne blocked some trolls, possibly both.
But how awful is it that she can’t even make a couple of tweets about being upset over George Floyd’s senseless death without getting hate like this in return?
