“You can’t weaponise your Blackness for monetary gain! And you can’t weaponise it against your own community!”
“You cannot evade legitimate questions and concerns at every corner, by citing your identity as shield.”
These comments, made by writers Aja Barber (in a now-deleted live video) and Otamere Guobabia respectively, are in response to the latest instalment of The Slumflower versus Florence Given saga.
Several Black writers have spoken up about the bullying and harassment that they have experienced at the hands of Chidera ‘The Slumflower’ Eggerue when they refused to support her campaign to be paid ‘reparations’ by Florence Given, whom she claims to have plagiarised her work. Eggerue went as far as using a slur against Munroe Bergdorf who has since been on the receiving end of transphobic abuse from Eggerue’s supporters.
Eggerue’s ‘feminism’ has been criticised before for its promotion of misandry and its tendency towards personal accumulation rather than collective liberation. She received backlash again since her public accusations against Given because of her online harassment and the weaponisation of the language of reparations and identity politics to deflect any and all criticism of her politics.