A right-wing school board candidate in suburban Milwaukee has been shamed into deleting her Twitter account after racist and homophobic tweets — including one that downplayed and mocked “the threat of white supremacy” — were revealed by a local news outlet.
Scarlett Johnson, who is also one of the organizers behind the Mequon-Thiensville School Board recall election, may have made those tweets disappear, but the controversy surrounding them doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first brought attention to Johnson’s tweets and confronting her about her social media posts since 2019, prompting her delete her whole Twitter account.
A couple of the tweets shared with the Journal Sentinel include one last year when Johnson sarcastically tweeted, “yeah, the threat of white supremacy keeps me up at night,” with those fateful words posted alongside a picture of a sloth yawning. She later tweeted without any hint of sarcasm that “there exists no white supremacist group in the history of America that has taken more Black lives than Planned Parenthood.”
Johnson denied being a white woman and said she is a Puerto Rican who has previously been the victim of racism, which she points to proof of her inability to be racist.
“Very hard to prove I’m not a white supremacist, but considering I have ethnic, curly hair, very dark skin, I’d probably not be a very good white supremacist,” Johnson told the Journal Sentinel during a brief phone interview.
Johnson — who was named to former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch campaign’s “Grassroots Leadership Board” — on Twitter also offered up a transphobic question: “how many gay men want to date men with vaginas?”
Pior to deleting her Twitter account, Johnson liked a tweet that supported the idea of wanting to “abolish public schools” and to “outlaw teachers unions.”
Quite the #NotSoHiddenAgenda… this is the main #MTSDRecall organizer and NoLeftTurninEducation WI Chapter VP… Scarlett Johnson. #SupportMTSD #NoRecall pic.twitter.com/PU5WYqqgAK
— Mequon Moderate (@MequonModerate) September 20, 2021
During an interview with the Associated Press last month, Johnson said “it would be bad to backslide into a more race-conscious, race-focused society.”
Earlier this month, Johnson explained the type of change she wants to bring to the Mequon-Thiensville School Board if she is elected.
Johnson isn’t the only Mequon-Thiensville School Board espousing hateful rhetoric.
Her fellow candidate Kris Kittell last week came under fire for trivilalizing the Holocaust in a social media post and employing QAnon talking points. Kittell denied having “an antisemitic bone in my body.”
While this type of rhetoric and controversy surrounding school boards and candidates is far from unique to Wisconsin, statistics show that the Dairy State is second in the nation for school board recall attempts, which is primarily due to disputes initiated by anti-maskers and teaching critical race theory, according to Ballotpedia.
The recall election is scheduled for Nov. 2.
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