Celebrities grow thick skin pretty quickly, but there's probably nothing worse than feeling as if their fame inadvertently caused hardship for someone in their life who isn't famous.
That's what British singer FKA Twigs says happened to her. During an interview with the United Kingdom's Sunday Times, the singer said that she got a tweet from a male fan who was telling her about how his friend—presumably a black woman—had cancer. He relayed to FKA Twigs that her music was helping his friend get through her treatments.
FKA Twigs sent an encouraging response to the fan, but that's when mean-spirited people started to tweet racist comments to the fan and the woman with cancer.
"They all started attacking her. Within 20 seconds it was just like, 'n—ga, monkey, ugly, die, bitch,' all this stuff on his feed," the singer recalled. "It broke my heart […] this lady who is really sick and is probably going to die."
The singer—who is of Jamaican, English and Spanish descent—spoke about race again during the interview, and described the advice she got from her father, who is black, about how to navigate the world as a black person.
She said he would tell her, " 'Sometimes you're going to have to work 10 times harder than somebody else to get the same appreciation, but never use it as an excuse.' "
"I agree with that," the singer said.
It's telling that nearly every brown person has heard some version of that speech from a loved one.
For more of black Twitter, check out The Chatterati on The Root and follow The Chatterati on Twitter.
Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features video interviews with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.
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