Teen’s Twitter account suspended after her response to election goes viral
Jane Oranika’s Twitter account was suspended after her response to the results of the 2016 presidential election went viral.
The viral video itself shows Oranika applying light-colored makeup to her skin while pretending to be Caucasian, saying things like, “Ketchup is a spicy, spicy food.”
The video, Oranika explained to BuzzFeed News, came from a running joke she had with her coworkers that, “If Trump is elected, we have nothing to worry about because we are Caucasian.”
“The only reason I had a political tweet was because it was election night,” she said, adding that she had no idea the video would get such a huge response because she had only posted it to make her coworkers laugh over the inside joke.
— Video of black woman being berated by white pro-Trump boyfriend goes viral —
She went on to say that she was not sure how she felt about the viral response to the video, or whether the response was positive or negative.
“Some people were saying it was similar to ‘blackface’, they called it ‘whiteface’,” Oranika said. “It was mostly strangers and they were clearly Trump supporters – it was in their bios… I didn’t take it to heart.”
Within 12 hours of posting it, Oranika found that her Twitter account was suspended. She appealed the decision, and when her account was exactly the same.
However, Oranika wasn’t upset by the decision to take her account down, saying, “When I tried to tweet it wouldn’t let me but I wasn’t offended by it [being suspended], I thought that if a lot of people had reported me… it was pretty responsible for a media platform to take whatever down as they investigate it.”
