Do we have another Roseanne Barr on our hands? Bette Midler took to Twitter on Thursday, Oct. 4 to share racist tweets that got her into some trouble with fans. 

“Women, are the n-word of the world,” she wrote in a since-deleted tweet. “Raped, beaten, enslaved, married off, worked like dumb animals; denied education and inheritance; enduring the pain and danger of childbirth and life IN SILENCE for THOUSANDS of years[.] They are the most disrespected creatures on earth.” According to USA Today, the tweet garnered 14,000 favorites and 8,000 comments before being removed from the social media platform. 

bette midler racist tweet
Twitter

After that tweet, she tried to defend her words by saying her words came from a 1970s John Lennon and Yoko Ono song. “I gather I have offended many by my last tweet,” she wrote in another since-deleted tweet. “‘Women are the…etc’ is a quote from Yoko Ono from 1972, which I never forgot. It rang true then, and it rings true today, whether you like it or not. This is not about race, this is about the status of women; THEIR HISTORY.”

But her followers weren’t exactly understanding. “Sighs.. .its so disappointing to see you use that quote. Women are highly disrespected – but don’t displace the atrocities that were done to black people by using that quote,” one user wrote. Another added, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Please stop. I am 100% a feminist but this is quite is awful. It erases the struggles of black women in particular. We HAVE to do better than this or we uphold the very systems of oppression that we are railing against.”

“The too brief investigation of allegations against Kavanaugh infuriated me,” she wrote. “Angrily I tweeted w/o thinking my choice of words would be enraging to black women who doubly suffer, both by being women and by being black. I am an ally and stand with you; always have. And I apologize.” We hope her fans are forgiving…