'Ghostbusters' star Leslie Jones outs racist trolls on Twitter; says she's numbed by the hatred

Comedian Leslie Jones, who stars in the newly released Ghostbusters reboot, faced the worst of the worst of Twitter, as hundreds of people bombarded her with racist and misogynist slurs. The root cause is Jones’ role in the new Ghostbusters movie, which had angered fans because of its all-female cast. [caption id=“attachment_2869940” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The new ‘Ghostbusters’ team[/caption] Along with Jones, the cast of the Ghostbusters reboot included Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon. The rebooted Ghostbusters trailer was earlier in the news because of a campaign to make it the most disliked video on Youtube, because angered fans disapproved of its all-female cast. While Jones initially opted to simply block the comments, she reached a tipping point, and started re-tweeting the most hurtful ones to show Twitter users how bad racism can get.

In the end, Jones called out to Twitter for stronger guidelines, and urged the micro blogging website to control the amount of racial slurs people can tweet. She also commented on the Black Lives Matter campaign and the ineffectiveness of controlling racism in America:

Twitter trolls who attacked Jones are just a small part of the larger problem of racism in America. Celebrities have tried to address the problem in the past, most prominently Jesse Williams, in his speech at the BET (Black Entertainment Television) Awards. The powerful speech against racism, which got him a standing ovation, also started a Twitter campaign against him for being too harsh on white people and a change.org campaign to get him fired from the popular series Grey’s Anatomy, where he plays Dr Jackson Avery.