Badass Teen Band Goes Viral For 'Racist, Sexist Boy' Anthem
Teen girl punk band goes viral for their catchy and on-point “Racist, Sexist Boy” chant
Four incredible teen and tweenaged girls created a band called The Linda Lindas and they’ve gone viral after sharing a video filmed in the Los Angeles Public Library jamming out to a song they wrote about racism and sexism.
LA-based punk band of Asian and Latina teens have taken the country by storm with their head-banging anthem “Racist, Sexist Boy” that was written after an incident that happened to one of the band members. Drummer and singer Mila, ten, said she wrote the song with bandmate Eloise, 13, after one of her classmates made a racist comment at the beginning of the pandemic.
“A little while before we went into lockdown, a boy in my class came up to me and said that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people,” Mila said. “After I told him that I was Chinese, he backed away from me. Eloise and I wrote this song based on that experience.”
Eloise added before they started playing: “So this is about him and all the other racist, sexist boys in this world!”
The song is less than two minutes but it’s clear from beginning to end that these young women aren’t here to play. “You are a racist sexist boy / And you have racist sexist joys / We rebuild what you destroy,” Eloise sings while the rest of the band jams out on their guitars. “You say mean stuff / And you close your mind to things you don’t like / You turn away from what you don’t want to hear.”
“Song of the day,” tweeted Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.
The Linda Lindas’ performance was part of an eight-song set they played at the library to celebrate American Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month at a time when violence and harassment of Asian Americans has gripped the country. There have been attacks from coast to coast, prompting President Biden to sign a bill into legislation to help stop it.
“All of this hate hides in plain sight,” Biden said at the White House before signing the bill. “Too often it is met with silence — silence by the media, silence by our politics and silence by our history. My message to all those of you who are hurting is, we see you,” he said. “And the Congress has said, we see you. And we are committed to stopping the hatred and the bias.”
More than 6,600 instances of anti-Asian hate have been recorded nationwide in the past year, according to the nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate. “Of all the good that the law can do, we have to change our hearts,” Biden continued. “We have to change the hearts of the American people. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Hate can be given no safe harbor in America.”
The Linda Lindas aren’t slowing down any time soon. They recently wrote a song that appeared in the Netflix film Moxie and by the sounds of it and the response to their music, they are just getting started.
