Source: Bravo / Getty
“The Kathryns” might replace “The Karens,” in the form of Kathryn Dennis, a reality TV star on Bravo’s Southern Charm, filmed in Charleston, South Carolina.
Dennis used her Twitter fingers to send Charleston radio host and activist Mika Gadsden a series of disturbing, aggressive, messages after Gadsden criticized a scheduled “Trump Boat Parade” organized by local white business owners.
Gadsden, who runs the Charleston Activist Network, shared screenshots of the messages and tagged Dennis in a tweet.
“This is what happens when a Black woman in #Charleston speaks up against white supremacy in the form of MAGA rallies,” the tweet began. In their exchange, Dennis sends a response “That’s how serious I take this,” followed by a monkey emoji.
Now if context was needed here, we’d be happy to oblige. Southern Charm depicts the lives of wealthy Charlestonians and the “drama” which ensues from being young (ish), white and rich. Charleston, a beautiful coastal city with a rising population, still lives deep within the bowels of its history, rooted on the backs of slaves who worked at neighboring plantations.
As we previously reported, several states with conservative leadership have opted to accelerate the opening process, abandoning previous stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus. The response to reopen the country, centralized in areas like the Midwest and south, speak to the history of violence against Black communities, especially when the data shows that the virus disproportionately effects those same groups.
Mika tweeted a links to the Buzzfeed and Page Six articles regarding their exchange with the caption, “The default is always violence for these women.”
On top of that, Charleston was also recently the center of two major national tragedies regarding race; the April 2015 shooting of Walter Scott (which took place in North Charleston) and the June 2015 Emanuel AME Church shooting, where nine parishioners were senselessly murdered during a weekly bible study.
Dennis has since apologized, but it’s too late to put the cat back into the bag.
“I want to acknowledge that using a monkey emoji in my text was offensive, and from the bottom of my heart I sincerely apologize to anyone and everyone I hurt,” Dennis tweeted. “Although the context was not my intention, there are no ‘if ands or buts’ that excuse me … I did not give it thought, and it was and is wrong. I know I am not that person. I know and will do better.”
In response, Mika let everyone know that she wasn’t having it and set the record straight regarding why she exposed Dennis’ messages.
