There is nothing like a slew of new rumors to get someone to address old mistakes. Alix Earle, the “Get Ready With Me” TikTok influencer, said this week that she’s “deeply sorry” for posting racist slurs against Black people multiple times a decade ago.
“I am taking accountability and want to make it clear that I was 13 years old and did not understand the deeply offensive meaning behind that word,” she wrote earlier this week on her TikTok and Instagram stories, which have since expired. “That is no excuse for using that word in any context or at any age. That absolutely is not the way I speak or what I stand for.”
The 23-year-old social media star said she had been advised not to address what she had written as a teen on the website Ask.fm, but now regretted that she hadn’t. Screen grabs of Earle using the n-word in 2014 — without the hard R, TMZ noted — originally resurfaced on Reddit a year or two back, which is presumably when she got that advice. Found more recently in the AlixEarleSnark subreddit: A post from eight days ago asking why the influencer would post photos of Black friends when she “wouldn’t even address the racist tweets” (which were not tweets).
Earle said Monday that her silence on the subject had allowed others to “fill the void” with untrue rumors.
“One rumor in particular is that I tried to trademark my old posts, which is absolutely ridiculous and untrue. Another is that a brand announced they are no longer working with me, even though we have never been in conversations with them about a partnership in any capacity,” she wrote.
She also lamented that her actions in 2014 had “led people to believe that I have any prejudice in my heart.”
Reactions to Earle’s silence and then her apology appeared to be mixed, with some people pointing out her age at the time and others pointing out that at 13 they already knew it was not right for white people to use that word.
“Everyone keeps saying how she’s going to keep ignoring it because the majority of her followers are just like her,” an Instagram user posted on Aug. 12. “She doesn’t give a s— about her POC followers, they don’t look like her and her besties.”
“Seriously …. its giving that you can’t take accountability,” another commented the same day.
Once Earle posted her apology, the reactions evolved. One commenter flipped out about her not making the statement in a post on her grids, where they would last, rather than in her stories, which have expired.
“ONLY A STORY POST?!?!….. THATS CRAZYYYYYYYYY,” one TikTok user wrote.
“As a public figure, you should have addressed this issue when it came out,” another commenter wrote on one of Earle’s Instagram posts. “The lack of accountability speaks volumes. Okay, fair this happened when you were 13. You don’t need to apologize however you have built your platform on being ‘genuine’ and you have not been so in the past couple of days. Now moving forward we all know you will be careful bit hopefully this turns as lesson and you don’t try to monetize on your ‘naiveness.’”
Earle, who is dating wide receiver Braxton Berrios of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and boasts 7.1 million followers and a billion likes on TikTok, appeared to be ready to move forward.
“My platform has always focused on positivity, entertainment, and uplifting others, and will continue to do so,” she wrote in her statement. “I am sincerely sorry to those I have offended.”
Her Instagram stories Tuesday and Wednesday, meanwhile, were about soup.
