Tressie McMillan Cottom described her recent swarming attack and ban from TikTok in her New York Times column. In stitching a video on blondness and discussing its use as a racial signifier, McMillan Cottom stirred up quite a reaction:
@black_was_genius #stitch with @mariel_darling blonde is not a hair color. #fyp #blonde #racialprofile ♬ Love You So - The King Khan & BBQ Show
"People often get angry when I write about aesthetics and power... That is the thing about status. We all want it, but, should we acquire it, we don’t want it to mean anything. We don’t want to feel bad about having status. The real blondes let me have it because, they maintained, being blond should mean something for them but not mean anything for the rest of us. That is not how status works.
"I was banned two days after my video had almost one million views."