’90 Day Fiancé’ Spoilers reveal that recently, Mike Berk, was caught back in 2014 making some pretty appalling, racist statements on social media. However, unlike Alina Kasha’s 2014 posts who blew up and eventually got her fired from the show Before the 90 days, Mike’s posts, while they may have initially made a splash, haven’t really been talked about all that much. No one has come for Mike, he really hasn’t had to address any sort of cancel culture mob coming after him and the BLM movement is basically “Mike Berk who? We don’t know her.”
But one person who has a lot to say about this is Alina Kasha herself. She says that she feels because she is a woman she is held to a much higher behavior standard than Mike is. Somehow, people have equated a proficiency in language (which Alina has demonstrated in English) to be an expert in the culture of the country itself.
’90 Day Fiancé’ Spoilers: Were We Too Quick To Judge Alina Kasha?
We wouldn’t expect an American who goes on 90 Day Fiancé the other way to know anything about the country they go to beyond the language, we don’t expect them to take an expansive course in the history of the place or employ their friends to educate them on what is and isn’t okay, culturally (even though in a lot of cases we wish they would), no, we give an American transplant in a different place the benefit of the doubt.
We’re not making excuses for Alina’s wrong statements and neither is she, the fact of the matter is, she just simply didn’t know the history behind the word and it isn’t used in her country the same way as it is here.
That was the fact of the matter, but it’s so strange that Mike was given the benefit of the doubt and given the statement “people change” over and over again by social media users and Alina was cancelled almost immediately?
Also, should we really be directing our ire at a girl in a wheelchair who truly didn’t know the meaning of the history of the word or should we be directing our ire at a white male who grew up in our country and knew full well what he was saying and doing at the time? Do we feel safer directing our “righteous indignation” at someone who couldn’t really fight back? Just a question for all the keyboard warriors out there.
The irony isn’t lost on Alina, she says that it could be because people do not expect her to be the girl in the wheelchair that’s so outspoken, and there may be some truth to that. After all, when Alina initially came on the show there were people who, while didn’t really express distaste at Alina being on the show, did express that Alina’s story wasn’t really one that they wanted to see.
A bigger question is why, though? If the posts had not been discovered and Alina had continued to remain on the show, would people have wanted to see her narrative play out or would she have been cancelled for another reason? Is our society so afraid of watching a disabled person find love and act like, God forbid, a sexual being? Just a theory,
Because whether or not we ever want to see that narrative – it happens. Disabled people do find love, even if it’s not a love that is traditionally aesthetically pleasing, and indeed that was an undercurrent of some of the commentary on Alina’s story, that her story was “hard to watch” but the racist posts just gave people a reason to legitimately cancel her.
We’re not saying that the racist posts were not a cancellable offense, but what we are wondering is where is the equal treatment for someone like Mike? Someone who grew up in our culture? Or was his story just more interesting because he could fit a more traditionally aesthetic narrative? We wonder. Stay tuned!!!
