Lena Dunham has been an actress, a director, a producer, and a writer over the course of her career. Primarily, she is known for creating, acting in, and writing for a HBO series called Girls. Furthermore, she is the founder of Lenny Letter, which is an online newsletter with a strong focus on feminism. However, Dunham is now focusing serious criticism because of an incident involving a bi-racial actress named Aurora Perrineau.
What Caused Zinzi Clemmons to Issue Her Condemnation?
What happened was that Perrineau filed charges for sexual assault against Murray Miller, who was one of the writers for Girls. Dunham and the other showrunner for the series proceeded to issue a statement in support of Miller, stating that they believed that Perrineau was mistaken about what had happened. Considering that Dunham has made a career based on her feminism, this seemed like a rather hypocritical position to take, seeing as how believing in the stories of victims of sexual assault tends to be a pretty basic tenet for most feminists. Even worse, her hypocrisy is particularly striking considering that she had written an op-ed blasting the tepid response of the relevant authorities when the first accusations against Harvey Weinstein started coming out, while mentioning a time when someone in a position of power had sexually harassed her as well.
In response to Dunham’s statement, a black writer for Lenny Letter named Zinzi Clemmons issued a strong condemnation of her support for Miller before announcing that she was leaving the publication. Furthermore, she urged other outraged writers with particular emphasis on other women of color to leave the publication as well because of what she called Dunham’s “well-known racism.” Elaborating, Clemmons stated that she moved in the same circles as Dunham in college but avoided her because of her “hipster racism,” which can be described as when people use satire and sarcasm as covers for racist behaviors.
What Is the Background of These Events?
Dunham has since issued an apology for failing to live up to the principles that she espouses. Under normal circumstances, she could be forgiven for making such a mistake because no one is a perfect adherent of their beliefs. However, the problem is that Dunham seems to have a habit of making such mistakes, meaning that a lot of people are no longer willing to extend to her the benefit of the doubt.
For example, Dunham received a fair amount of criticism for the fact that Girls had no characters of color besides one-note stereotypes even though it was supposed to be set in Brooklyn, which is one of the most diverse places in the United States. Later, she made an effort to rectify the situation by introducing a love interest played by Donald Glover, which was undermined by the fact that she continued to fail to integrate characters of color into the series in a meaningful manner.
Furthermore, there was the time when she posted a picture of herself with a shawl wrapped her head on social media claiming that she had woken up in a “real goth/fundamentalist mood” mere hours following a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin as well as the time when she stated that she was more sympathetic towards the stray dogs than the impoverished people living in India. Summed up, this isn’t the first time that Dunham has caused people to wonder because of what looked an awful lot like casual racism, meaning that for a lot of people, this latest incident is just the last straw.
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