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Topics: Elon Musk
Cameron Frew
Elon Musk's mother has slammed an article which accused the billionaire of growing up with white privilege.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief is the richest man in the world by a considerable margin. He's at the forefront of electric transportation and space innovation, he's developing brain chips, and he'll soon be the owner of Twitter.
With that status alone, never mind his social media antics and volatile impact on crypto markets, he's opened himself up to a lot of scrutiny over the years - but his mum isn't having any of it when it comes to his white privilege.
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The New York Times recently released an article titled 'Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege', shining a light on 'how growing up as a white person under the racist apartheid system in South Africa may have shaped him'.
Sharing the article to Twitter, the publication wrote: "Elon Musk grew up in elite white communities in South Africa, detached from apartheid's atrocities and surrounded by anti-Black propaganda.
"He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation."
Maye Musk also retweeted the article, writing: "In South Africa, if you publicly opposed apartheid, you went to jail. In Russia, if you publicly oppose the war, you go to jail. @nytimes, are you going to blame children for decisions made by governments?"
Her tweet has attracted more than 42,000 likes, with a mixture of support and criticism. One user wrote: "The fact that The New York Times is blaming Elon Musk for not speaking out against apartheid when he was a baby is insane."
Another user wrote: "Maye you are deliberately missing the point. The point here is that Elon Musk grew up under a system that oppressed Black people and favoured white people, including him. That's a historical fact."
Musk's father, Errol Musk, also spoke to the publication as part of the same piece, and said his children were very aware there was something wrong with the apartheid system in South Africa from a young age.
He said: "As far as being sheltered from it, that’s nonsense. They were confronted by it every day. They didn’t like it."
Musk earlier spoke about leaving South Africa before he'd be forced into conscription, because 'spending two years suppressing Black people didn't seem like a great use of time'.
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