Ellen Degeneres deleted a tweet in support of the ongoing police brutality protests over the weekend after widespread backlash against her comments.
In a since-deleted tweet, the talk show host responded to the death of George Floyd, a 59-year-old man killed by police in Minneapolis on May 25. Former police officer Derek Chauvin faces charges of third-degree murder after pinning Floyd to the ground and pressing his knee to Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, ending his life. The three other officers involved in Floyd’s death have yet to be arrested, leading to protests in dozens of cities across America and around the world.
Degeneres tweeted that she shares the frustration of many Americans at yet another brutal killing of an unarmed Black man, but critics claimed her statement amounted to little more than hollow PR-speak.
“Like so many of you, I am angry and I am sad,” the 62-year-old comedienne wrote on Saturday. “People of color in this country have faced injustice for far too long. For things to change, things must change. We must commit ourselves to this change with conviction and with love.”
But detractors charged that the tweet missed the mark in several ways. For one, the statement doesn’t explicitly mention Black people, who bear the brunt of police violence in the United States. A 2019 study from Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice found that Black men, the most likely population to be targeted by police brutality, are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by a law enforcement official.
Degeneres’ comments also did little to recognize the systematic failures which allow these killings to continue, even after the highly publicized deaths of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown resulted in similar protests.
The row was ill-timed for Degeneres, who has weathered more than her fair share of controversies in recent months. Last October, she defended a viral photo in which she was spotted laughing with George W. Bush at a Dallas Cowboys football game by saying the two are “friends,” despite his former administration’s noted opposition to marriage equality and LGBTQ+ rights. The host claimed she is “friends with a lot of people who don’t share the same beliefs” she has.
