Deray McKesson and his ongoing presence as an active voice in civil rights activism has garnered him both high praise and sharp criticism in a short time. Over the weekend, that criticism reached an angry zenith when online trolls and other enemies of McKesson’s aims attacked him online.
British paper The Guardian covered the developments in the attacks against McKesson, who has been a target of conservative pundits looking to discredit the former school administrator and educator.
McKesson, who says he was moved to join the Black Lives Matter movement and related causes after the death of Ferguson, Mo. teenager Michael Brown, has faced his detractors with confidence but had yet to weather the vicious types of venom hurled his way via Twitter.
The hashtag, “#GoHomeDeray” began to trend last Saturday nationwide. Twitter users used the tag to spew hateful rhetoric and attack McKesson’s character. To his credit, Mckesson took the high road he normally does in addressing the backlash.
More from The Guardian:
On Saturday the subject was popular enough to be trending. It was not immediately possible to establish who generated the hashtag, which prompted race-tinged comments and then a backlash from users accusing those speaking positively about the hashtag of acting out of hatred . Other commenters praised Mckesson for having the power to rile those posting racist messages sufficiently to cause the hashtag to trend .
“I wouldn’t be here [in Charleston] if those people had not been killed,” Mckesson told CNN when asked about #GoHomeDeray, referring to the allegedly racism-driven church shooting.
On Twitter, he said : “I continue to talk about race because race continues to impact my life and the lives of those who look like me. I’m not the enemy, racism is.”
The hashtag prompted other Twitter users to rally behind McKesson by erecting the “#ThankYouDeray” tag, remarking on his tireless efforts to examine how race is moving certain conversations in the country at the moment.
Check the following pages for tweets related to the #GoHomeDeray hashtag, which probably failed to hammer home its larger point in the end.
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Photo: Instagram
