Ebro Darden found his Twitter mentions flooded with criticism this week, after weighing in on the recent controversy surrounding Doja Cat.
The "Say So" singer was blasted over a resurfaced 2015 track called "Dindu Nuffin"—a term commonly used to mock black victims of police brutality. She was also accused of participating in racist chat rooms in the past, but has since denied being involved in any hateful conversations.
"To anybody who I've hurt using this term when I used it, it's because I was in chat rooms all the time, and I was kind of locked away," she said via Instagram. "I was always on there dealing with people coming at me left and right talking about different slanderous terms after another. The term that I used in the song is one that I learned that day. People were calling me that day left, and right and I used it in a song. It was to kind of take back and say 'fuck you to those people.' The song, however, I agree, maybe the worst song in the entire world."
Despite her apology, the hashtag #DojaCatIsOverParty continues to trend on social media, leading to increasing calls for the artist to be canceled. Ebro apparently doesn't approve of this approach.
On Saturday, the radio talk show host took to Twitter to suggest Doja Cat be "uplifted" rather than "canceled." He implied the biracial singer was suffering from some form of self-hatred due to her lack of exposure to black culture. (Doja Cat's mother is American-Jewish and her father is a black South African.)
"Instead of canceling Doja Cat for having some weird fetish and identity issues, [is it] possible to uplift her and show her that being Black is beautiful?" Ebro wrote. "Im assuming she had no Black culture in her suburban wasteland and her white Mom couldn't help her [...]"
Some were quickly to slam Ebro, who is also biracial, for appearing to excuse Doja Cat's offensive decisions.
Azealia Banks also took aim at Ebro for his comments:
Ebro addressed the backlash Tuesday on Hot 97's Ebro in the Morning show.
"I'm assuming she may have not had any black culture in her suburban wasteland and her white mom probably couldn't help her, so she got some identity issues," he said on air. "And you off in chat rooms ... so, clearly there's some weird—if you liked being called [the n-word], maybe she likes that. Maybe it turns her on ... but clearly there was some sort of mental, identity something ... Boy, they was coming for me."
He continued: "Anytime somebody's getting canceled on Twitter, if you jump in and cape for that person or provide some sort of positive [commentary] ... And it don't make it better that my mom is white, so they think I'm caping for [Doja Cat] because she's mixed, right? So they're like, 'You're just sticking up for the light-skinned girl.'"
You can hear Ebro's full response below.
