California Governor Gavin Newsom recently stopped in Atlanta for his memoir book tour, sitting down for a fireside chat with Mayor Andre Dickens. But what was meant to be an honest conversation about personal hurdles quickly turned into political fodder online.
A clipped video of the event started circulating across social media, heavily pushed by Republican commentators. In the short snippet, Newsom is seen talking about having a low SAT score, seemingly suggesting to the audience that his academic struggles made him “like you.” Critics immediately pounced on the clip, accusing the governor of pandering to a Black audience by relying on offensive tropes about intelligence and testing.
But Mayor Dickens, who was literally the one sitting across from Newsom asking the questions, isn’t having it.
Taking to social media, Dickens posted the full, unedited clip of the exchange to clear the air, offering a rebuttal to the manufactured online outrage.
“Take it from someone who was actually in the chair asking the questions: context matters more than a headline,” Dickens wrote in his caption.
He clarified that the conversation surrounding Newsom’s new book naturally led the governor to open up about his own well-documented lifelong struggles with dyslexia and academics.
“The conversation around his new book included him speaking about his own academic struggles, including not doing well on the SAT,” Dickens explained. “That wasn’t an attack on anyone. It was a moment of vulnerability about his own journey.”
Dickens also took a moment to point out how the current hyper-partisan political landscape makes authentic, human conversations increasingly difficult to pull off without bad-faith actors weaponizing them.
“We’ve gotten so used to loud, chest-pounding politics that when someone speaks about shortcomings, people try to twist it into something else,” he noted.
But the real mic-drop moment of the mayor’s response was aimed directly at the out-of-town critics trying to dictate how Atlantans should feel about the exchange.
“Let me be clear though. This is Atlanta,” Dickens wrote. “We don’t need anyone to tell us when to be offended. And history has shown… when we are, you’ll know.”
The mayor finished his statement by urging people to do a little homework before jumping onto a viral outrage bandwagon. “If you want the full context, watch the full clip, read the book, and engage the complete conversation.”
