SOUTH CAROLINA, United States. – A South Carolina woman and a Black Lives Matter supporter accused of beating her 3-year-old adopted daughter to death posted less than two weeks before the alleged crime over her white children’s ‘privilege’.
Ariel Robinson, 29, and her husband Jerry Robinson, 34, of Simpsonville, South Carolina, were denied bail on January 19 after being charged with child abuse.
The arrest warrants allege that the couple inflicted a “series of blunt force injuries” on the girl, identified by the Greenville County coroner’s office as Victoria Smith.
The girl died in the hospital.
Local NBC subsidiary WYFF-TV reported that Smith spent most of her life in foster care before being recently adopted by the Robinsons.
Smith was described as a “beautiful girl, inside and out” by Tiffany Huggins, a former adoptive mother of the girl.
“She had the best personality and I’m not just saying that because I was her mother, she was just our light,” he said.
WYFF interviewed Ariel Robinson in August after she won season 20 of the Food Network reality show “Worst Cooks in America.” At the time, he shared how he planned to use the $ 25,000 prize to help his growing family.
“I just know the Lord had his hands on me and had a purpose for me to stay there,” he told the outlet. “He knew we were going through this adoption, we could really use the money and he let it all benefit.”
The case has drawn special attention because Ariel, who is also a comedian, had posted on social media about the ‘privilege’ of her adopted white children less than two weeks before she and her husband were arrested, using the hashtags ‘whiteprivilege’ . “BlackLivesMatter.”
“In my house, my black children are treated the same as my white children, and my white children are treated the same as my black children. It’s a shame when they go out into the real world, they don’t, ” he tweeted on January 6.
“I’ll never have to worry about my white kids and that makes me happy,” he continued in a thread.
“What makes me sad is that any care I don’t have for them will be multiplied by my black kids. Until this is resolved, we are NOT the US. We can be Justice, equality and equality for all! he stated with the hashtag “BlackLivesMatter”.
The thread continued with her vow to use her voice to defend and defend her children.
“I am a mama bear, and I will do everything I can to protect my children and make sure their future is just as bright as they have the same opportunities and are treated as equals the way God made them,” wrote Robinson .
“There should be no white #privilege, only American privilege,” he concluded.
As someone privileged enough to live in the United States, Ariel Robinson has a God-given right to trial and the presumption of innocence.
This applies to the gruesome death this girl suffered as well as the suggestion that it had something to do with ‘white privilege’.
On this last point, there is no evidence that the color of the girl’s skin played a role in this crime. That connection seems to have been made exclusively by netizens who have long been skeptical of the concept of “ white privileges ” (that is, the idea that whites have certain privileges that are denied people of color, to be perfectly clear).