Kal Penn posted a piece on The Huffington Post late Thursday night that purported to explain and clarify his views on stop and frisk.
There was only one problem: The piece didn’t clarify anything.
Instead the reader ends up getting some ramblings about what it’s like to be a brown man post-9/11, a line about how difficult it is to be “nuanced” in just 140 characters (must every celebrity use that line when they get into Twitter trouble?), and a few sentences about building bridges across community lines.
Needless to say, the criticism continued.
In which Kal Penn still entirely misses the point about why stop&frisk is an abomination. http://t.co/aj0Pv6Uw2o via @HuffPostPol
— JA Johnson (@JAJohnson1) August 16, 2013
@KalPenn wrote something on Huffington Post saying he wasn't clear. He was, though. Its ok for Blacks to be treated as ciminals, I got it
— Ms. Brooks™ (@TheREAL_MBrooks) August 16, 2013
So…sorry I'm not sorry, then? #weseeyou RT @jeremyjewitt: .@KalPenn posted a vague non apology on huff post. http://t.co/mdyfUY8sXo
— Tynisha (@windybayou) August 16, 2013
.@jeremyjewitt the ol' can't-express-nuanced-ideas-in-140-characters, apology. "It's a good policy" was pretty clear to me @kalpenn
— Wild Joey Hickok (@60th_Street) August 16, 2013
This 'clarification'/non-apology is more annoying b/c it means you *do* know better but was thoughtless @kalpenn – http://t.co/SlKIzDkMyn
— syreeta mcfadden (@reetamac) August 16, 2013
I feel as if Kal Penn should have listened when Hari Kondabolu offered to write his apology.
— Daenerys Trillgaryan (@NaniCoolJ) August 16, 2013
For more on stop and frisk, be sure to read Bridget Todd’s open letter to Penn.
Lakshmi Gandhi is a co-founder and editor of The Aerogram. Follow her on Twitter at @LakshmiGandhi or email her at editors@theaerogram.com.
