Charges Dropped Against Black Woman For Using The N-Word On “X”

Stay out of Black people's business

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has dropped its case against a Black woman in London for tweeting the N-word in 2023.

Jamila Abdi, a 22-year-old student, was charged under the Communications Act of 2003 after she referred to Alexander Isak, a Black soccer player, as a “n*gg*” in a 2023 post on X.

A data monitoring system that was explicitly targeting online hate speech against athletes flagged the post and sent it to authorities. Nearly a year after she posted the tweet, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) charged the student.

Jamila’s lawyers argued the N-word is commonly used both in African American and Black British vernacular, and it is significantly different than the racial slur. They also noted no evidence showing the post was offensive or threatening.

After a year and a half of legal wrangling, CPS dropped the case, stating that there was insufficient evidence to support a “realistic prospect of conviction,” Hyphen reported.

Jamila recalls receiving a call from her mother informing her that the police had come to their home looking for her. Several moments later, the 22-year-old received a text message from the investigating officer, who informed her that she was wanted for questioning over a “racial” tweet. Jamila said she was perplexed when she went to the police station.

“I was trying to rack my brain to think of what could I possibly have said that anybody could have considered as racist … Then I went to the station, saw the tweet, and thought: are they being for real,” the 22-year old told The Guardian.

Jamila accused prosecutors of misusing hate speech laws by weaponizing them against the very communities they were meant to protect. In an interview with Hyphen, she noted that the N-word used within the Black community has a different context.

“We can be anti-Black towards each other in the sense of the conversations people have about appearance, hair texture, colorism. But to say that I can be racist to another Black person by saying the N-word casually is ridiculous,” she told the outlet.