Ava DuVernay, the Academy Award-nominated director of films such as Selma and A Wrinkle In Time, has taken to Twitter to lambast Kanye West and R. Kelly for their usage of lynching imagery as a method of self-defense, accusing them of "evoking racial terrorism."
In a series of Tweets posted on May 1, Ava goes off on Kanye and Kelly, shaming them for their decision to compare themselves to lynched black men, and to give them an education as to the reality of what lynching was.
DuVernay includes pictures with every tweet, showing memorials to black men who had been lynched as late as the year 1940. Some of the reasons for the lynchings include: striking to protest low wages, working to register black voters, and addressing a white police officer without using the title "mister." These are the reasons a black person could be hanged back then, and DuVernay doesn't think that Kelly and Kanye can compare themselves to that.
"Shame on you, @kanyewest + @rkelly. If you want to have a REAL conversation about lynching, get at me," says DuVernay. "Until then, have some respect and dignity for the dead. The murdered. You’ve gone beyond embarrassing yourselves. You’re both in territory that you don’t REALLY want to be in."
Kanye and Kelly both used lynching imagery to defend their positions last week. Kanye, in a now deleted tweet, said, "They cut out our tongues so we couldn't communicate to each other. I will not allow my tongue to be cut." Kelly recently compared the recent boycott against him to a "public lynching."
See DuVernay's tweets below.