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Former “Lenny Letter” Writer Zinzi Clemmons Calls For Women of Color To "Divest" From Lena Dunham

Dunham recently implied Aurora Perrineau, a black actress, was a liar when she accused a 'Girls' writer of rape.

Zinzi Clemmons, a writer for Lena Dunham’s feminist weekly newsletter, Lenny Letter, says she will no longer be contributing to the publication in light of the Girls actress’ latest statement, which insinuated that Aurora Perrineau lied about being raped.

Clemmons relayed in a statement made via Twitter that she was “horrified” to hear Perrineau, a black woman’s, accusation of sexual assault by Murray Miller who she claims raped her in 2012 when she was seventeen. Dunham subsequently, without any reason other than she’s friends with Miller, dismissed Perrineau’s account in a statement made to The Hollywood Reporter.

Zinzi also claimed to have past knowledge of Dunham’s questionable stances on race and actions similar to this most recent news, which she described early this morning (November 19).

“She and I ran in the same circles in college. Jemima Kirke was in my year at RISD while I was at Brown [Ed note: the campus is next door]. We had many mutual acquaintances and still do,” she wrote. “Most of these acquaintances were like Lena–wealthy, with parents who are influential in the art world. They had a lot of power and seemed to get off on simultaneously wielding it and denying it.

“Back in college, I avoided these people like the plague because of their well-known racism,” Clemmons continued. “I’d call their strain ‘hipster racism’, which typically uses sarcasm as a cover, and in the end, it looks a lot like gaslighting– ‘It’s just a joke. Why are you overreacting?’ is a common response to a lot of these statements. In Lena’s circle, there was a girl who was known to use the N word in conversation in order to be provocative, and if she was ever called on it, she would say ‘it’s just a joke.’

Zinzi Clemmons says she will no longer write for Lenny Letter and is encouraging other women of color, particularly black women, to do the same. She’s currently in Nigeria at a literary festival hearing from women who in her statement says are “putting themselves in danger every day to help women in some of the worst conditions on earth.”

See Zinzi’s statement and follow up tweets on the matter below.

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