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Arrow Star Stephen Amell Leaves Social Media After Misguided Tweets About #IStandWithAhmed

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Jessica Lachenal
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Published: Sep 17, 2015 11:05 am

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Didn’t mean to offend anyone. Truthfully. Was simply suggesting that two wrongs don’t make a right. I’ll go away for a bit now. SA

Posted by Stephen Amell on Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Arrow star Stephen Amell is taking time off from social media after his stunningly misguided defense of Texas in light of #IStandWithAhmed. Ahmed Mohamed, a young student in Texas, was arrested by the Irving, Texas police department yesterday for bringing a clock to school because some racist teacher couldn’t be convinced it wasn’t a bomb. Many people began to make the usual comments regarding Texas, saying things like, “Oh, of course this happened in Texas…” and, “Texas is in the news again for this stuff?” You know the ones we mean.

None of that sat well with Amell, who took to Twitter to voice his… uh, “concerns.”

O… oh. That’s… that’s kind of a weird thing to say, isn’t it? 

I can’t believe it, either. You’d better quit while you’re ahead. Oh, why do you have a number in front of your Tweet, it looks like you’ve got more to s–… oh please, no, stop. Wait!

Y… yeah. Okay…

… no. What? That’s… that’s not profiling. That’s not profiling at all.

That some “reverse racism” mental gymnastics right there.

Anyone else get the feeling they’re suddenly reading an argument between your older family members on Facebook?

Oh. Are you boiling down your argument to #NotAllTexans now?

And he’s off.

It’s incredibly disappointing to see someone whose work you enjoy totally muck it up on social media. It’s even worse when it comes to commenting on major issues like the ones around Mohamed. Up until now, Amell had been mostly great on social media. Maybe his rule of not tweeting about real life events was a good rule–but then again, we never would have known how he actually felt about these things.

The bottom line is that he was completely off base with these tweets. Texas doesn’t need defending. Moreover, the clearly problematic systems and institutions within Texas sure as hell don’t need defending. Amell’s inability to recognize where the disproportionately distributed power lies was his downfall. Acknowledging that what happened to Mohamed was a terrible thing does not give you the excuse to say all that other stuff.

It’s likely Amell realized his mistake before he was done with this thread. He tweeted a few more things about how he’s used everyone’s reaction to his tweets as a kind of… filter, I guess?

Then he tried to deflect by placing the attention back onto Mohamed’s invitation to the White House.

For now, Amell is off social media. His accounts on Facebook and Twitter remain active, but he’s removed his profile pictures and stopped posting. The break might be a good idea, but forgive us if we doubt that he’ll actually change his mind or learn anything from this debacle. Only time will tell.

I’m sorry to say: you’ve failed this city.

(via Comic Book Resources)

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Image of Jessica Lachenal
Jessica Lachenal
Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.
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