With how interconnected politics and social media tend to be nowadays, there are certain expectations that are usually prudent to have before making a political statement on Twitter.
Perhaps one of the more obvious truisms holds that as soon as you firmly place yourself on the political spectrum (including in the center), you’re likely to attract a barrage of statements from those who disagree with you. If you’re an entertainer, you can also expect at least one person to lament that you should stay out of politics for whatever reason.
However, even with these expectations in place, it’s still not impossible to make a statement that draws backlash from more than just the usual suspects who oppose you.
On Wednesday, acclaimed singer Better Midler made such a statement.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity of Bette Midler’s Twitter feed will know that she is very much opposed to President Donald Trump.
In addition to her bio declaring herself as a possibly tongue-in-cheek write-in candidate for the 2020 election, most of her recent posts have to do with various issues surrounding the Trump Administration.
In one of them, however, she apparently saw something unusual about the demographics attending one of his rallies.
In particular, she seemed to believe that several black men in the background were paid to attend the rally.
In expressing this viewpoint, she also decided to call the men pictured “blackground.”
Both this accusation and this choice of terminology quickly drew accusations of racism from Twitter users.
In many of these cases, it was clear that these accusations came from ardent supporters of Trump.
That bias can’t be responsibly ignored as their criticisms often made the attempt to paint the Democratic party and its voters as racist rather than focus on their issues with Midler’s statement itself.
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That said, some did address an apparent assumption by Midler that a person’s political beliefs could be predicted on the basis of their race.
Indeed, there do exist black citizens who genuinely consider themselves Trump supporters. Each person has their own reasons for favoring the political candidates they do.
So for users like Glen Woodfin, there seemed to be an unfortunate implication in Midler’s tweet that the only reason a black person could ever support Trump is a direct financial incentive.
Another user, however, cast doubt that the backlash was coming from a genuine place of concern when so many systemic issues of racism go relatively unchallenged.
Others characterized at least the majority of the backlash as disingenuous given Trump’s own historical issues with regards to race relations as documented by Vox.
This includes his recent, congressionally decried tweets in which he said that four congresswomen who oppose him should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
The four are all American citizens.
Regardless of the character behind the backlash against her, however, Midler seems to stand by her tweet.
She hasn’t responded to the matter directly, but did make a separate tweet referring to Trump supporter rhetoric as “trolling” and “boring.”
The tweet also currently remains on her account.
