As we all know Sunday marked the 15th anniversary of 9/11. The United States of America joined together to mourn the men and women who lost their lives, and celebrate and commemorate the brave men and women who came to the rescue. Naturally social media was full of different thoughts and emotions towards the anniversary on the actual day of, however one woman’s tweets has brought a new kind of attention towards the tragedy.
22-year-old, Elexus Jionde, a history graduate from Charlotte, North Carolina, tweeted:
Not even 24 hours after it was posted, it earned 50,000 retweets, and even more favorites. Wanting to build on her point of proving that different periods of racism and injustice should be celebrated the same way 9/11 is, she started a Twitterthread. That’s when her trouble truly just started.
Read @Lexual__ thread@twitter has taken it down but luckily some smart lady took screenshots
See retweets below#FuckYouTwitter
— Petty Stitch (@MrStitch_2HM) September 12, 2016
You can see all 49 tweets here.
This thread caused a controversial discussion, bringing in a large group of positive supporters, but seemingly just as many haters.
https://twitter.com/n0limit__quinn/status/775054872387448832
https://twitter.com/RobKinnison1/status/775726947309617152
https://twitter.com/kurama86/status/775184887968108544
https://twitter.com/sarahkalemon/status/775105570302853121
https://twitter.com/Cevans1591/status/775032763510554624
@ewaalinaa Why are you relating white people with 9/11? It affect America as a whole, not just white people. Smh
— c o l l i n (@Murray21234) September 11, 2016
You think it doesn't still hurt? You have the gall to imply 9/11 doesn't even matter? What have YOU gone through exactly?
— ZOG. ✡︎ (@BedrockPerson) September 14, 2016
Naturally she addressed some of the discriminative tweets, which only made things worse.
I’m sorry, but you can’t go on a rant preaching racial equality and then call someone a mayo packet. That defeats your point of ending racism, because you just made a ‘racial’ comment to someone else. You should treat people the way you want to be treated, and can avoid defending yourself by putting down someone else and bringing race into the conversation.
Suddenly in the middle of the cross fire her thread was deleted! A Twitter bug was allegedly the reason why it disappeared 12 hours later.
So @Twitter really disabled a thread to deny people context. Has this ever happened b4? Or was it just the topic? pic.twitter.com/PbxHAkQF68
— elexus jionde (@Lexual__) September 12, 2016
I think Jionde’s tweets were very informative and did bring up a good topic of discussion. As a Canadian, we weren’t taught a lot about racial inequality in our History classes because it wasn’t something nearly as severe as it was in the US. Don’t get me wrong, we still learned about it and know about the historic events that took place, but after reading her tweets I can say it expanded my knowledge.
I think she had the right intentions but chose the wrong time to express her views in such a strong presence. Bringing light to a topic that affected a large number of individuals in the US on the same day as a massive historical event was going to make the reaction that much worse. 9/11 was truly an event that changed the world, and it’s still a sensitive and fresh topic that Americans don’t take lightly.
Everyone remembers where they were when the news broke, everyone can remember the panic that took its toll in all major cities around the world and even the small cities, in fear their area would be next. People feel very strongly about this day and it is something that should be celebrated on a large-scale, and they will do everything to defend the day.
You cannot expect to bring up other historical days with significance on the anniversary on one of the largest historical days in the country’s history! I understand she took the popularity of her initial tweet and used it as a stepping stone to expand on her opinion and get her words out there, but you can’t expect that everyone will be supportive. She must’ve known she was going to get hate for some of what she said, obviously not to this level. People are genuinely heartless and it’s heartbreaking to see the criticism she’s receiving.
After all is said and done, she spoke with confidence and expressed herself to the best of her ability. Although the way she is handling some of the feedback isn’t the best, she educated thousands of people and she should be proud she’s created such a powerful discussion.
What the world should take from this Twitter tread is that we should inform others on historical moments, and topics that aren’t discussed nearly as often as they should. But at the same time, we need to be respectful of others opinions and not be offended by something someone said, even if we don’t always agree.
Featured image via Ravi Sharma on Unsplash
