William is a self taught chef who uses TikTok to post food recipes ranging from quesadillas to Japanese sponge cakes. The 12-year-old chef has almost 1 million followers on his TikTok page Cooking With William and even received praise from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.
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But because they can’t let us have anything, trolls have infected William’s page, leaving racist comments under his videos just because. Fortunately, other Black TikTok users aren’t having it, coming to the preteen’s defense and calling out TikTok itself for being racist by allowing racism.
In a now viral TikTok video, Snap Wexler (@snapwexler) said the app is not doing enough to protect Black creators like @cooking_withwilliam on the platform, even though Black folks contribute significantly to the app.
According to Wexler, “people are so immature and so ignorant that they were taking the time to write out an anagram of the N-word” under at least three separate videos.
Wexler reported three racist comments on the chef’s page, but TikTok determined there was no violation of their guidelines. “So you can call a 12-year-old boy the N-word and it’s fine? It’s not fine,” Wexler said.
Even though TikTok community guidelines don’t explicitly denounce “discrimination” or “racism,” the app’s community guidelines state: “TikTok is enriched by the diversity of our community. Our differences should be embraced, rather than a cause for division. We do not allow any hate speech, hateful behavior, or promotion of hateful ideologies.”
It is unclear if the original racist replies have been removed by the user or by TikTok — but if no one else got us, we got us: Wexler’s video propelled users to support William’s page. His comments are flooded with Black users who are “running security” to make sure William is protected.
“The fact we all came as this young man’s army! We standing behind and in front of u baby” @Memphis_Mek replied to William’s recent video.
“As we’re all scrolling and on patrol...make sure yall are liking and commenting [on] each of his videos as well!” said user @boymom.x4
@1_bellarose wrote “Auntie & Niece from Indiana doing comment security check! Also followed!”
Wexler posted another TikTok also thanking the public for showing love to the young man. “Young people do need some sort of encouragement to be everything they can be,” he said.
William continues to post on TikTok unfazed by the hate, and now, he has Black TikTok to rally behind him anytime he needs. Although Wexler insisted the app is racist, he said “if enough people complain about something, [TikTok] seems to react to it.”
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