Shawn Mendes Speaks out Following Since-Deleted Racially Insensitive Tweets

Shawn Mendes is speaking out about old racially insensitive tweets after a fan brought up the issue at a Q&A event. The fan in question asked why Mendes had never addressed the old posts, which have now seemingly been deleted.

“This is kind of a hard question, I don’t want you to take an offense to it at all,” she said. “I just kind of wanted to do it for black Twitter, black Shawn stans everywhere out there. Um, in the past there is a lot of kind of ignorant tweets I guess I could say. Why has it never been acknowledged? Or why has there never been anything about it?

“We just kind of want to know because we get a lot of hate for supporting you, knowing that this is your past.”

Mendes, 21, replied, “Yeah, of course. A lot of things just need to be moved on from, but I also think that the things that [you] say, like I had friends when I was 14 who would, like, take my phone and post things of them because they thought it was funny that I had, like, 2,000 followers and it was this big thing, and they’d post photos of themselves and at the time I was just, like, not thinking about it.”

“I had no idea I was going to have 50 million followers, which doesn’t make it any better. But um, yeah totally I apologize for everything insensitive I said in the past, but with that being said yeah I think that’s not my personality.”

The fan concluded her question, “Also, I have a black lives matter flag that I might throw on stage so please catch it.”

Mendes shouted back, “Throw that at me!”

PopBuzz reports that the old tweets, said to have been posted in 2013 during Mendes’ Vine days, included one that read, “I can see the black coming out in you Lauren!” in response to a friend’s message.

Mendes shot to fame after covering various songs on Vine. Recently, the “Stitches” singer teamed up with girlfriend Camila Cabello for “Señorita,” which they are set to perform at MTV‘s 2019 Video Music Awards on Monday night. The song made history when it broke Spotify’s record for the biggest debut from a male/female duet.

Mendes and Cabello are up for several awards together: Best Collaboration, Best Art Direction, Best Choreography, Best Cinematography and Song of the Summer. In addition to those five nominations, Mendes is also up for Artist of the Year.