The Chelsea Clinton Uproar and the Public Perception of Pregnancy
March 19, 2019
It’s not a great look to berate pregnant folks. It’s especially not a good look when the person you’ve chosen to yell at has only the most tangential connection to what you’re upset about. We can argue with Chelsea Clinton’s ill-considered phrasing in her Twitter criticism of Ilhan Omar, but to accuse her of being the primary agent “stoking hatred” for Muslims on social media and inciting the Christchurch massacre is…well, the kind of thing a grieving undergraduate student activist might do in the heat of the moment after 50 people have been slaughtered by a white nationalist while they pray. It’s understandable.
One comment on “The Chelsea Clinton Uproar and the Public Perception of Pregnancy”
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Yes, thank you!! I’m writing a paper on this confrontation and the
reaction that followed using thousands of tweets I captured while the
video was going viral. How is it that people can be so blinded by their
associations of white pregnant woman with fragility that they can leap
to Clinton’s defense when this young woman is speaking up for her
community out of grief and pain, a community that just experienced a
brutal massacre? Perhaps you’re right that it was easier emotionally to
react to this confrontation than to its causes. And it’s not just white
people and conservatives leaping to Clinton’s defense (I write this as a
white person), though they do seem to form the majority of the Team
Clinton camp, as you put it, not surprisingly. Why are so many
non-Muslim Americans so unaware about their Islamophobia? How do we
encourage a more self-aware disposition in the American public?