Social justice warriors have a time-tested ability to take the pure joys out of almost anything in life and call them racist, sexist, or unequal. The latest victim is the internet’s newest favorite celebrity “the Chewbacca mom,” who’s real name is Candace Payne.
Stephanie Land wrote in She Knows on Tuesday that the love, attention, gifts, and scholarships being lauded on Payne is “white privilege in a nutshell.”
The Chewbacca mom has received attention from national media outlets including James Corden, Ellen DeGeneres, Good Morning America, and Mark Zuckerberg, as well as gifts and scholarships adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Land said it’s unfair that the public reward a woman for entertaining the country with her contagious laugh and sunny personality, but more than 500,000 people signed a petition in support of having Child Protective Services removing children from a mother’s custody after her little boy fell into a the gorilla cage at the zoo.
“The contrast plays into how America rewards, supports, glorifies and lifts up white mediocracy and vilifies people of color and people in poverty,” Land wrote. “Though it’s wonderful that Payne’s family, who had the means for her to be a stay-at-home mom, has half a million dollars less of financial stress, other mothers who received national attention, in obvious need of the same, have gotten very little or nothing at all.”
Yea, because it’s too totally separate events. While the incident regarding the gorilla was tragic and garnered far too much internet attention, it’s understandable that people have a negative reaction to the mother — but it had nothing to do with race.
How many countless times was Britney Spears called a bad mom for driving with her child on her lap without a seatbelt, or the countless ‘bad mom’ stories featuring Kris Kardashian or Kate Gosselin.
As far as internet famedom goes, it’s equally colorblind. People of color have made quick cash and some financial success off of briefly entertaining Americans online. Remember Antoine Dodson who said that rapists were “climbing through your window”? He made enough money to move out of the projects. Or Sweet Brown who famously claimed “ain’t nobody got time for that”? She made a career off her YouTube celebrity.
Internet fame and the fortune that could follow has nothing to do with white privilege — just capitalism, entertainment, and entrepreneurship.
