One month on from the unearthing of Maya Jama’s offensive, past tweets about ‘dark skin b*tches’, she has now publicly spoken out about it for the first time.
Back in April, an unsavoury tweet from Maya at age 17, in which she quoted a joke (‘”Dark skin b*tches shaving their head expecting to look like Amber Rose, when really they end up looking like Micheal Jordan.” Looooooooool’) caused an online uproar, sparking a necessary debate on colourism and holding people’s words to account.
Now, with the heat around the situation having died down, the presenter has addressed the situation on The Receipts Podcast, further apologising for her words and opening up on her past embarrassment of being of Somali heritage.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Maya Jama (@mayajama) on
Speaking to hosts Milena, Tolly and Audrey, Maya expanded on her previous Twitter apology to further express her disappointment in herself for ever having said those words, and on what she’s learned about colourism (prejudice and privilege based on skin tone) since.
Maya commented: ‘I understand it [colourism] as much as I can, of course, I’m not a dark skinned black woman, but from what I can understand is that it is years and year of abuse feeling like you are less than.’
Maya, who is dating rapper Stormzy, explained to hosts Tolly, Milena and Audrey that by appearing on the podcast, it was her chance to address her mistakes as a human, ‘and not just some notes on Twitter or some statement apology’.
The BBC radio and television presenter also opened up about her childhood experiences of feeling ‘embarrassed’ and judged by her own race, coming from a half Swedish and half Somali descent, even lying about her true heritage. While featuring as a guest on the most recent episode of the online show, Maya revealed that when growing up she would lie about her background and tell her classmates that she was European and Caribbean. ‘There were these boys and they were so horrible to me when they found out that I was Somali,’ she admits.
‘When they asked me where I’m from I used to be like, “Yeah, I’m Spanish and Jamaican” or something like that – and just made a whole completely new background because I didn’t want people to judge me from where I was from’.
Maya went on to link this to show her understanding of the impact her controversial tweets had, saying, ‘So I get it… it’s not the same thing but I understand the feeling of people being rude or taking the piss out of where you’re from or your race or your skin colour when its something that you can’t change’.
Lesson learned! Folks, be careful what you post online as it may not only haunt you later, but could contribute to some seriously upsetting prejudices felt all around the world.
Listen to the full episode here:
