She’s taken a brief sabbatical from social media, but that hasn’t stopped Maya Jama from responding the controversy surrounding some of her old tweets.
The Bristol born presenter was dragged online for her usage of the slur “dark skin b*tches” from an old tweet in 2012, when she was 17 years old.
She’s now taken some time out to appear as a guest on the popular The Receipts Podcast, where she addressed the scandal and used her own troubles around race growing up to empathise with the backlash she received.
She said, “When [peers at school] asked me where I’m from I used to be like “yeah I’m Spanish and Jamaican” or something like that – and just made a whole completely new background because I didn’t want people to judge me from where I was from
“I get it, it’s not the same thing, but I understand the feeling of people being rude and taking the piss out of where you are from. Or your race or your skin colour. When it’s something you can’t change.
“I understand it [colourism] as much as I can, of course,” she added. “I’m not a dark skin black woman but from what I can understand is that it is years and year of abuse feeling like you are less than.”
Listen to the full episode of The Receipts Podcast featuring Maya Jama above now on GRM Daily.