Tyler the Creator trolls racists and homophobes with brilliant new shirt

by Richard Howard

May 12, 2015

0

0

0

0

0

Email this article to a friend

Tyler the Creator does not care what you think about him. This is well known, and to whit, his decidedly un-PC comments and art are mostly met with either acclaim or run-of-the-mill complaining rather than shock as of late. His latest stunt, however, is nothing short of genius. Via Odd Future’s Golf Wang tumblr, Tyler unveiled the most recent addition to his Golf clothing line – a white T-shirt with the highly recognizable white pride Celtic cross logo. However, the cross has been filled in with rainbow colours and the ‘White Pride World Wide’ logo replaced with ‘Golf Pride World Wide.’ And just on the off-chance this alone didn’t send your average Caucasian Crusader into conniptions, Tyler decided to present said shirts with the following photo:

If you’ve ever come across Tyler’s joyously confrontational posts online, you’ll be aware the dude is a high-level troll. He described the brainstorming process for the t-shirt on his tumblr thusly:

“Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that these guys aren’t fans of Blacks, Gays, Asians or anything else that doesn’t fit in “white” box. Now having the thought process that i have, i asked myself some questions: What if a black guy wore this logo on a shirt? Would he be promoting self hate? Would he be taking the power out of a shape? What if a gay guy wore this on a shirt? Would he promoting Homophobia? Then BAM! I Had it. Throw a little rainbow in the logo…and take a photo with a white guy in it and we have an amazing photo. The thing that tops it off is the homo erotic tone of the hand holding, which to some degree HAS to piss off the guys who takes this logo serious. This made the photo even more important to me, because it was me playing with the idea of taking the power out of something so stupid. Or maybe my whole idea on this is stupid.”

As you probably know, Tyler gets a lot of flack for perceived homophobic behavior himself (largely due to his regular use of the word “faggot”). He usually refuses to overtly explain himself, but here he broached the subject, saying:

“Also, ever since my career started, ive been labeled as a homophobe, simply because of my use of the word faggot. Again, trying to take the power out of something, I WAS NEVER REFERRING TO SOMEONES SEXUAL PREFERENCE WHEN USING THAT WORD. I mean, i’m legit one of the least homophobic guys to walk this earth but, most people just read the surface.”

The fact is, changing people’s opinion on the use of such a charged word is an exercise in futility. Tyler’s supporters will point to the LGBT members of his crew and his words and actions that have explicitly supported LGBT rights while his detractors will maintain that any use of the word regardless of intent is hurtful and spreads hate. With this t-shirt, though, I think we can agree that the Odd Future leader, slyly and subversively as it may be, may have hit the nail on the head.

Tags: Music, News, controversial, Gay, gay pride, Golf Wang, Odd Future, Tyler the Creator

0

0

0

0

0

Email this article to a friend