Shawn Mendes addresses his old "ignorant and offensive" tweets in fan Q&A

21 August 2019, 16:37

Shawn explained why he had never addressed his problematic tweets when a fan pulled him up on it at a recent Q&A session.

Over the past few months, Shawn Mendes's tour stop Q&A sessions have become quite a place for fans to ask him some hard hitting questions - most of which he genuinely takes the time to answer.

Back in July, he awkwardly dodged a question about his relationship with Camila Cabello and then a few days later, he appeared to walk out of a session after he was asked by a fan about the inspirations behind the song 'Señorita' (he responded to the fan criticism over that sitch...)

READ MORE: Shawn Mendes criticised for declining to help a fan come out during a Q&A

Shawn took part in another fan Q&A at one of his tour stops recently where he was asked about his old problematic tweets by a fan in the crowd.

"Ok, so this is kind of a hard question and I don't want you to take any offence to it at all," the fan said in the recording that was shared on social media. "I just kinda wanted to do it for black Twitter, black Shawn stans everywhere out there."

"In the past, there's a lot of kind of ignorant tweets I guess I could say, kind of hurtful offensive tweets that you have tweeted before. I just want to know like, why have you– and I think recently it's been deleted, and I don't know if it was you or if it wasn't. But if it was - or if it wasn't - why hasn't it ever been acknowledged and why hasn't there ever been anything about it.

We just kinda wanna know because we get a lot of hate for us supporting you knowing this has been your past. Not to say this is you now or anything like that but it's just really important for us to know how you are."

The fan is referring to several racist and offensive tweets about skin colour, including one that said "i can see the black coming out in you lauren!" in response to a friend who was ranting on the timeline. The tweets were tweeted from Shawn's account back in 2013 when he was a Viner. Most of those tweets have now been deleted but Shawn has never really acknowledged any of them.

At the Q&A, Shawn took the time to listen to the fan's question in full and then responded to her answer, saying: “I just think that a lot of things need to be moved on from, but also I had friends when I was like 14 who would like take my phone and post things of them and they thought it was funny that I had like 2 thousand followers." (Fans believe he was referring to an Instagram picture of his friend, posted back in 2012, with a caption containing the N-word.)

"At the time I was not thinking about it," he continued. "I had no idea I was going to have 50 million followers - which doesn't make it any better. But I apologise for everything insensitive that I said in the past but with that being said, yeah I think - that's not my personality."

His response has been met with a mixed reaction. Some fans are applauding him for answering the question in the first place but others aren't happy that he passed blame on to his friends and didn't take responsibility himself.

What do you make of Shawn's comment and apology?