While he may be the child of one of music’s most legendary power couples, Sean Lennon has revealed he experienced racism growing up.
In a lengthy Twitter thread, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s son also opened up about how he believes political correctness has negatively impacted “culture”.
“When I was young ppl used to say racist shit about Asians around me all the time and then be like ‘Oh sorry! But you’re not reeeally Asian so…’ and I think they sincerely thought that would make me feel better,” he wrote.
“I’m not exactly sure why I brought that up but I think it’s because I want to say that I grew up in a time when there was zero political correctness.”
Lennon continued on to explain how he believes political correctness and “morality policing” is “arguably” making things worse.
“Race relations seem to be in the middle of a ‘two steps back’ moment,” he said, referring to current events as well as racist DMs he has received.
“I am very sad that I feel like I have to say the following but here goes: Asians are not the problem. Blacks are not the problem. Jews are not the problem,” he said.
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“And yes, Whites are not the problem either. No race or culture is ‘the problem.”
“I have lived in many cities and countries and I can say from experience that there is an EQUAL distribution of shitty ppl and good ppl in EVERY human population.”
Lennon went on to say that he is not blaming political correctness for “all of the bad things we are seeing in culture today”, but that he is “simply saying we should check our strategy if we are not getting the results we intended.”
“I don’t know what the solution is, but I suspect that over sensitizing ppl to arbitrary characteristics like skin colour may be doing more harm than good.”
“I know very well that the idea of being ‘colour blind’ is out of fashion, that MLK’s vision of character over skin colour is considered to be naive,” he continued.
“But that vision surely made our society better. I’m not sure the modern vision of ‘race consciousness’ is making things better.”
“Just remember who benefits from the ‘divide and conquer’ paradigm. It ain’t us that’s for sure,” he concluded.
You can read more about this topic over at The Beatles and Classic Rock Observers.
Check out the tweets from Sean Lennon on racism and political correctness:
When I was young ppl used to say racist shit about Asians around me all the time and then be like ‘Oh sorry! But you’re not reeeally Asian so…’ and I think they sincerely thought that would make me feel better. I’m not exactly sure why I brought that up but I think…
— Sean Ono Lennon (@seanonolennon) May 23, 2021
