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A tweet made by Jeff Bezos blasting a Black professor over her comments regarding the death of Queen Elizabeth II has brought him a whirlwind of condemnation from many users on Twitter.
Last Thursday (September 8), the death of the British monarch elicited a vast array of reactions online – with some not too broken up over her passing. As initial reports spoke of her grave condition an hour before, Carnegie Mellon University professor Uju Anya expressed her thoughts on Twitter. “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying,” she wrote. “May her pain be excruciating.”
The billionaire founder of Amazon wasn’t thrilled with Anya’s comment, quote-tweeting it and saying: “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow.” Anya’s original tweet was taken down by the social media platform, but she fired back at Bezos in another. “Otoro gba gbue gi,” she responded. “May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers.” The phrase “Otoro gba gbue gi,” is from the language of the Igbo people of Nigeria and roughly translates to, “May you die of an uncontrollable running stomach.”
Carnegie Mellon issued their own statement decrying Anya’s words later on that day, writing in part that they “do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages”. They also stated that they do not intend to inflict any punishment on the linguistics professor, who does have tenure at the university.
Dr. Anya, who describes herself as an “antiracist” and “feminist”, has been a longtime outspoken critic of the British monarchy, citing her Nigerian and Trinidadian roots and the impact that the British Empire had on both nations in the past. She remained defiant amid the high buzz brought about by the Twitter spat, but would wind up
in “Twitter jail” due to her initial tweet apparently violating the platform’s guidelines.
Many on social media jumped to Dr. Anya’s defense. “if jeff bezos is appalled by twitter’s reaction to the death of queen elizabeth just wait till jeff bezos sees twitter’s reaction to the death of jeff bezos,” a Twiter user wrote as the spat ensued.
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