May Hashira, the Twitch streamer, is sticking with her statement about interracial dating after her brief excerpt provoked an online backlash that lasted a week and included bullying and even death threats, as she herself states.
The excerpt was circulating on social media over the past week. It depicts Hashira, a 25-year-old Nigerian-American content creator, responding to comments that imply that Black women who date white men are either insecure or hate themselves.
Sitting in her brightly decorated streaming space surrounded by plushies, Hashira is scrolling through her phone with comments and wonders about the fact that Black men who date white women are not accused of having low self-esteem and self-hate.
“If a Black woman f**ks with a white man, it’s never true love,” Hashira can be heard saying in the video excerpt. “Like, they’re trying to say it’s always because of low self-esteem and self-hate. So what does that mean when a Black man f**ks with a white woman? I really want to know. I really want to know.”
“Like if it’s low self-esteem and self-hate, what the f**k? Maybe they just like the n**** or the w******. I don’t f**king know. You guys are, y’all n****s just, I just really want people to be racist, because they’re racist. Like, be dead serious,” Hashira adds further.
Later on in a post on the new Twitter alternative, X, Hashira defended her position. She referred to one of her past experiences, which she has already described once, to raise awareness of what Black women face when attending a predominantly white institution. Now her critics turned that experience into a weapon.
“Being this hateful toward me over something that happened when I was 13 is genuinely insane,” Hashira wrote in her post. “Bringing up my public humiliation every time you want to make a point is cruel. I spoke about what happened to me to bring awareness to what Black women experience at predominantly white institutions, and now those same experiences are being weaponized against me.”
“Taking my childhood experiences and tweets out of context to justify bullying me and sending death threats is f***ing ridiculous,” Hashira continued. “I was a child. My trauma is not ammunition for your arguments.”
“I’m not going to let my experience with one person dictate how I feel about an entire group of people. That does not mean what happened was okay, and choosing not to live with that hatred does not make my experiences any less real,” she wrote. “You do not have to agree with me, but nothing justifies this. I am not a self-hating Black woman. I love myself very much, and I’ve worked very hard to get here.”
Hashira finished her post by adding a comment to her critics: If you carry this kind of hate in yourself, it must be exhausting. At least try to release it from your heart, whether for my sake or for yours. This is not an apology.
Hashira mentioned the backlash she faced during a recent livestream, expressing confusion about why her critics reacted that way.
“They’re literally mad because I’m not racist and I don’t even get it,” she said. “I don’t get how it’s gotten this far, but I just think, I just think the Black community just needs an enemy right now, which it’s me.”
“I’m glad–motherf****rs could; I’m glad I could bring the community together,” she added. “It’s so annoying. It’s actually so annoying and, like, so ridiculous.”
