7 Reasons Black Twitter Would Love to See Iggy Azalea Log Off for Good

Iggy Azalea leaves twitter

Getting Tired of Her Racist Passive-Aggressive ‘Favorites’

As many bloggers and social media users have pointed out in the past, Iggy Azalea has mastered the art of using her favorites on Twitter as a tool to embrace the racist quotes she would get in trouble for tweeting herself now that she has an image to uphold. A Tumblr page, operated under the name Piggy Azalea, is dedicated to capturing Iggy’s racist moments online and recently referenced some of her controversial favorites. As it turns out, sifting through the hip-hop star’s favorites reveals many tweets from her fans that suggest Black people are racist and insists that Black pop stars need to give their awards to white artists.

Q Tip Schools Iggy

Brushing Off Q-Tip’s Important Hip-Hop History Lesson

Unlike many other people who have taken note of Iggy Azalea’s culture-appropriating ways, Q-Tip didn’t have anything rude to say about the “Fancy” rapper. Instead, through a series of about 40 tweets, he simply tried to share hip-hop’s important history with her. “HipHop is an artistic and socio-political movement/culture that sprang from the disparate ghettos of NY in the early 70’s Coming off the heels of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT and approaching the end of the Vietnam war it was a crossroads 4 America specially for blacks in the US our neighborhoods were PROLIFERATED w/a rush of HEROINE,” he explained. He went on to explain how hip-hop served as a platform for an oppressed community and how racism still plagues the Black community today. He added that while it’s OK for white people to participate in hip-hop, they must understand its history and acknowledge its roots — something Iggy Azalea hasn’t done through lyrics, interviews, tweets, videos or actions. Either way, she was quick to write Q-Tip off.

“I find it patronizing to assume I have no knowledge of something I’m influenced by, but I’ve also grown up with strangers assuming that,” she tweeted. “So it’s completely fine and I’m used to it by now. I don’t lose any sleep over it. I’m also not going to sit on Twitter & play hip hop squares with strangers to somehow prove I deserve to be a fan of or influenced by hiphop.”

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