Left-wing pundit Keith Olbermann is slammed for 'racist' tweet comparing Trump to 'a whiny little Kunta Kinte' – the name of slave from 80s TV series 'Roots'
Left-wing pundit Keith Olbermann has been slammed as 'racist' after describing Donald Trump as 'a whiny little Kunta Kinte'.
Olbermann tweeted the remark on Tuesday, in response to a Fox News segment discussing Trump's recent attacks on the channel.
Kunta Kinte was a character on TV show Roots and the book on which it was based - a Gambian man who was enslaved and brought to the US, tried to escape multiple times, and eventually had his foot cut off as punishment.
Keith Olbermann has been branded 'racist' after he compared Trump to 'a whiny little Kunta Kinte' - the name of a slave in book and TV series Roots
Olbermann defended the remark, saying that he was using Kunta's first name as a stand-in for the word 'c**t'
Olbermann later deleted the tweet and tried to explain that he had simply been using the name Kunta as a stand-in for the word 'c**t'.
But he was blasted on Twitter for describing Kunta as 'whiny' and minimizing the experience of slaves in the US.
'So you decided this was a clever take down of the malignant narcissist Trump,' user Kalarigamerchic wrote.
'Sadly all you did was mock a generation of Americans, who view the Roots character you used as an insult as a symbol of what our ancestors went through.
'Shame on you.'
'Not your place. Not EVER,' Blackamazon wrote. 'As a white man? A member of a journalism so utterly inept at addressing its racism, and still managing to fail AT THIS JUNCTURE IN 2020 AD.
LeVar Burton, who played Kunta in the original miniseries (left, 2016 remake, right) hit out at Olbermann, saying it is wrong to describe the slave as 'whiny'
'Not your place ever. Especially when it’s is so haphazard you misuse the reference.'
Arthur Schwartz quipped simply: 'Shut up, racist.'
Lavar Burton, who played Kunta on Roots, also weighed into the row, saying that Olbermann's excuse does not stack up because Kunta is not pronounced the same as 'c**t'.
'Dear @KeithOlbermann, #Kunta is pronounced with a long “u” as in unity, not a short “u” as in cup. Try again! Love, Kunta,' he tweeted.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Burton added: 'I think the thing I didn't address on ... is that at the end of the day, whether he was trying to call Trump a name without using the word or not, he still referred to Kunta as "whiny."
'Enslaved people were not "whiny."'