YouTube star and comedian Nicole Arbour has been heavily criticized after releasing her own version of Childish Gambino‘s powerful video for his song, “This Is America.”
Arbor dubbed her version, the “Women’s Edit” and was promptly slammed for co-opting a work which examined the black experience in America, with many calling her video “a white women’s edit.”
“This is not a women’s edit,” wrote one social media user. “This is a WHITE womans edit. If you cannot see the difference, you’re a s–t feminist and a hack.”
“You truly didn’t understand ‘This Is America’ if your thought process was let me make a WHITE women’s edit version,” another Twitter user wrote to Arbour. “Please delete and apologize for this atrocity.”
Arbour, who disabled the video’s comments, has since issued “not an apology” but rather an explanation for the “purpose of [her] rendition.”
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“I thought it best to respond to the misinterpretation of my video here to clarify openly,” she wrote. “The purpose of my rendition was to honor the spirit of the video which absolutely moved me, by adding my and many women’s life experiences and truths to the brave and brutal truths expressed in the original.”
Continued Arbour: “It was created with every intention of bringing a light to women’s experiences such as the shaming of mothers breast feeding, common place date rape drugging, the labels put on us of ‘prude or hoe,’ pressures to create a family, workplace harassment, the glass ceiling, drug dependency, effects of social media on modern relationships and self, and included a nod to the cheerleaders who have come forward demanding at least min wage from the multi million dollar corporations they work…
