Politics - News Analysis

Tomi Lahren Tweets — Then Quickly Deletes — Ridiculous Racist Tweet About Elizabeth Warren

Conservative firebrand and Fox News host Tomi Lahren shared a hoax on Twitter Friday afternoon suggesting that Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a racist decoration in her kitchen.

At approximately 3:15pm EST Tomi Lahren tweeted out an image taken from an Instagram video that Elizabeth Warren took on New Years Day from her home. In the background on top of her kitchen cabinets there are various decorations and knickknacks.

In Lahren’s image of Warren, she has one of these knickknacks circled. Lahren then posted alongside it an image of a figurine of what appears to be an African American eating a watermelon.

The figurine behind Warren in the video is clearly not the racially-sensitive image that Lahren suggested. The image first circulated among conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters online, who shared the image on Reddit, Twitter, 4Chan and Facebook over the past few days.

The symbolism regarding watermelons and African Americans has been a racially charged one for well over a century. Defenders of slavery frequently used the fruit to paint African Americans as simple-minded. They used the reference to the fruit to imply that these people were happy when provided watermelon and a little rest. Watermelons have also been viewed as a major symbol in the iconography of racism here in the United States.

Lahren deleted her tweet less than three minutes after sharing it.

Comments

Comments are currently closed.