Miss Universe Malaysia says black people should relax as they chose to be born coloured

Miss Universe Malaysia 2017 winner Samantha Katie James has sparked outrage over her controversial remarks on the Black Lives Matter protests in the US.

In a series of posts, Samantha, 25, took to her Instagram Stories to claim that the response shown by the protesters are outright “foolish”.

She also told African Americans to “take it as a challenge” and claimed that they “chose to be born as coloured (people) in America.”

When a user messaged her directly to ask what she meant when she said people “choose” to be born with a certain skin colour, Samantha responded by saying that our “souls” determine such outcomes.

Samantha, who is of Malaysian Chinese-Brazilian heritage, also identified herself as a white person in her replies.

Social media users slammed Samantha’s’ remarks and she hit back at criticisms by saying that she had been “insulted all (her) life for being a white girl in a local Malaysian school.”

“Imagine comparing her white a** being scolded by her headmistress for ‘bringing Western culture to school’ with years of slavery and institutional racism suffered by black and brown folk,” said one Twitter user..

Samantha’s’ Wikipedia page was also edited by trolls who introduced her as a “racist” following the backlash, and has since been edited to reflect its original content.

Protests erupted across several US cities in recent days after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man who died in Minnesota after a white police officer pinned him to the ground and knelt on the back of his neck for more than eight minutes as he yelled, “I can’t breathe”.

A video of the incident spread on social media, triggering anger as activists took to the streets to speak out against racism and police brutality.