Loni Love sparked a major debate when she said that black people don’t know how to eat healthy.
What We Know:
- While recording an ad segment on The Real, the Weight Watchers ambassador burst into tears while reflecting on the type of foods she ate growing up. She said that many Black girls and women aren’t informed about healthy diets as healthier food often isn’t accessible to them.
- The conversation was kept fun and playful, but things took an abrupt, serious turn when Love spoke about growing up in Detroit’s public housing system.
- “Let me tell y’all, I did not know how to eat,” she said. “Growing up in the projects, we just had to eat what we could.” She continued, “A lot of women in the African American community, we don’t know how to eat because we grew up that way.”
- She continued: “So I’m trying to tell y’all, thank you to WW, because we wanted to do this to help our brothers and sisters – everybody, but I see y’all. I see y’all at my comedy shows and y’all like, ‘We need to get healthier,’ and that’s the reason why we’re doing this. It’s just to make y’all aware of what’s happening in the community. You can eat and not starve, and you can still lose weight.”
- Many took Love to task on social media afterward and said they have a huge problem with her making a blanket statement about Black women and Black people in general.
- Some also brought up The Real fellow co-host Amanda Seales in their comments. Seales wore a deadpan look on her face as Love talked about her childhood.
- “UGHHH again!!! Loni your black experience don’t represent all black women!!!” one commenter stated.
- “Loni has had some anti-blackness issues but her relating her experience as a poor black child in a food desert is not one,” someone wrote. “Think abt why yall couldn’t manage an ounce of sympathy for her discussing lack of access to nutritious food & resorting to diet culture now to counteract that.”
- Love has since responded to the backlash during a chat with MadameNoire where she was promoting her upcoming book I Tried To Change So You Don’t Have To.
- She explained: “First of all I never speak for every Black woman. If you go to my book, it actually explains how I grew up so my statement was for some women. Although, there were some women who were upset, there were a lot of women who understood what I was saying about accessibility capitalism has caused in the poor communities- that has caused us not to be able to eat clean.
“The thing I realized about being on a show like The Real, I don’t have to explain myself. Unfortunately, we have 6-8-minute segments and you have four other hosts. By the time I get in, I may have 30 seconds and then we have to get out.”
- This isn’t the first time Love has received backlash for a comment she’s made. In January, she said that Black men don’t know how to carry on monogamous relationships and got blasted for it. She made the comment after Kevin Hart’s cheating scandal was discussed in his Netflix docuseries Kevin Hart Don’t F—k This Up.
Watch the segment below beginning at the 6:35 mark.
