TikTok star Madeline Argy has apologised to fans for joking about her racial ignorance.
In a recent TikTok video, Madeline recounted how she used to tell people that she wanted to “live in a sundown town” when she was older because she didn’t understand what the term meant.
“I told, like, 100 people that I want to live in a sundown town when I grow up because I didn’t know what the fuck that was. I thought that they were, like, the tiny little American towns like Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls or, like, from Paper Towns, when it’s, like, it doesn’t exist on a map for some reason,” she said in her video. “Like the cute American towns where there’s, like, literally 20 people and they all drive pickup trucks, that’s what I thought a sundown town was.”
Sundown towns are all-white areas in the United States that practice racial segregation by excluding non-white people via discriminatory policies, violence, or intimidation. Some of these towns historically had signs that told non-white people to leave before sundown, hence the term. While the number of sundown towns has decreased since the civil rights movement, these practices are still in effect throughout many integrated areas in the United States.
Madeline, who recently signed to Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network, was immediately met with backlash for joking about her ignorance. Though Madeline is British, many Black Americans have shared why her video was offensive, regardless if she understood the meaning or not.
“Who the fuck is she talking to that made sundown town sound idyllic? That’s problem number one,” said user @myahtbh in a video. “Problem number two is people using words and phrases when they don’t know what the fuck it means. Because when you say shit like that, you say something not knowing what it means and it’s actually really offensive, the person who receives it, is offended, is expected to just let all of the offense wash right over them.”
Others argue that it would’ve been unusual if Madeline heard the term “sundown town” without the context of what it meant.
One day later, Madeline removed the video and posted an apology on TikTok.
“Guys I want to apologise for the sundown town post before that gets to any more ears than it already has without like, me being able to say sorry,” she said on August 15th. “I had been saying for years, that like, sundown towns look like a really nice place to live because I did not know what they were. So I was trying to poke fun at myself for that.”
Madeline clarified she’s been saying this “to other European people who don’t know what they are.” She went on to say that she understands it would be distressing for someone to hear her say that, given they did know what the term meant and that sundown towns still exist— a fact she also claims she did not know until her video got backlash.
In response to a user questioning how she heard the term “sundown town” without context, Madeline said she has “no clue.”
“Probably in music [with] poor/no context, and then I took the term to mean something like a small American town foolishly,” she commented.
While there has been mixed reception to her apology, fans seem to hope that Madeline has learned that joking about racial ignorance is never okay.