Source: Joseph Okpako / Getty
Ari Lennox released an emotional video in response to the unwarranted and incessant responses she received after a Black man compared her and singer Teyana Taylor to Rottweiler’s on social media.
The tweets began on January 1 where a user named @WinEverUwantIT tweeted, “Ari Lennox and Teyana Taylor’s ability to have dangerously high sex appeal while simultaneously looking like Rottweilers will always amaze me.”
Lennox responded to the tweet by writing, “People hate blackness so bad.”
“Mom and Dads please love on your beautiful black children. Tell them they’re beautiful constantly. Tell them Black people are beautiful. Tell them black features are beautiful,” she wrote in a second tweet.
Lennox then took to Instagram live after the comments began pouring in over what she tweeted. Lennox set aside her eccentric personality for a minute to voice frustration over the fact that many of her Black followers sought to discredit how she was feeling over the attack.
Through tears Lennox pleaded with her followers to begin to have more compassion for Black women, who remain the pillars of the Black community and the keepers of the Black family.
“I’m not with it, how people hate Black people so much. How Black people can sit up here and say, ‘It’s not my problem” or ‘She does look like a Rottweiler.’ That’s fine. And you want to talk about how people are so sensitive, they want to cancel freedom of speech. Why is that your speech? Why are you so comfortable tearing down Black women and no other race? Look around! When are Hispanic women ever compared to dogs? When do they do that? When do they do that to white women? When are white men do that to white women? When are Hispanic men doing that to Hispanic women? They’re not doing it.
“How come as a Black women, me sticking up for it, I’m Azealia?” referring Azealia Banks, to the New York rapper who consistently makes anti-Black and controversial statements.
Lennox previously faced criticism over her features and decided she would no longer be silent about the unwarranted commentary she received.
“I like to expose people,” she said in a later video. “People need to be exposed for being self-hating little f—s.”
“I made this live because I want people to know I really do love myself. I love my nose. I love Black features I want us to get to a point where we are becoming aware of the self hate sometimes when you are referring to black women as a dog. Because we’re not doing this to other races. Or to races of women who have a nose like this.”
She went on to say that she did not mean to discredit anyone’s beauty if it falls more in line with European beauty standards, but the reality is that emphasis and value is placed on that standard, over those who have more African features.
“They love to tear down Black women with wide features, or just features of Blackness.”
“It bothers me because you don’t understand while I’m at a place that I may love myself, there’s somebody else who wants to die,” she said.
Twitter went hard for Lennox by retweeting photos of her in her bountiful glory and sending her affirming messages.
