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Chet Hanks hasn’t always had the best public image. It’s been three years since Tom Hanks’ rapper son released his song “White Boy Summer” and the ensuing chaos, and now, he’s doing some damage control.
Chet has dabbled in the rap game for the better part of a decade now, but it was 2021’s “White Boy Summer” – a play on Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer” from a couple of years prior – that really got people listening, for better or worse. Mostly for the worse. It wasn’t long before the song’s tongue-in-cheek message was spun into a piece of far-right rhetoric, used by groups like the Proud Boys and fringe online communities like 4chan – extremist groups in other countries even caught on. And Chet’s personal history of cultural appropriation and using racist slurs almost certainly exacerbated the whole thing.
On Tuesday, the Global Project Against Hate And Extremism shared a report about the short, yet notable history of “white boy summer” and how it worked its way into racist, sexist territory. Today, Chet took to Instagram to clear the air: “White boy summer was created to be fun, playful, and a celebration of fly white boys who love beautiful queens of every race. Anything else that it has been twisted into to support any kind of hate or bigotry against any group of people is deplorable and I condemn it.”
The damage has been done, Chester. But better late than never, I suppose. See his post below.