Yesterday the internet went wild after some folks on Twitter accused Ellen of being racist when she posted a photo of Usain Bolt photoshop with herself riding on his back.
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“This is how I’m running errands from now on”, DeGeneres wrote in a tweet with the image.
Some people didn’t like it.
Critics compared the joke to US slavery, making light of a white woman “riding on his back like a mule, a horse as some form of property”.
But Bolt, who on Sunday clinched the Olympic 100m title for the third Games in a row and is bidding for the triple-triple here, insisted: “I’ll have enough rest and enough energy to definitely try for the world record”.
Ellen has been a vocal activist against discrimination. If it weren’t for the protective instinct that so many of us have toward Ellen, this gag might be seen quite a bit differently.
What do you think of the Ellen DeGeneres‘s Usain Bolt meme? As she said in her tweet, sending a racist message would be the exact opposite of her true self.
DeGeneres immediately recognized the furor that was beginning to build and took to her own Twitter account to dispel the notion that she is a racist.
DeGeneres tweeted a response to the backlash on Tuesday saying the picture wasn’t meant to be racist.
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“So riding on his back like a mule, a horse as some form of property is fun to you”. The trouble with the image, one user explained, was that it invoked imagery reminiscent of slavery in the U.S., when black people were subjugated by whites. A year later, she started boxing after being motivated by a story that her father – a former boxer – told her about Laila Ali taking after her dad, the great Muhammad Ali.
