Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio is clarifying his now-controversial remarks seemingly insinuating that a Black woman “looks like she sleeps from a tree upside down.”
“Hey morons, I was actually talking about the WHITE girl whose toes were hanging over her shoes, who is literally dressed like a f***ing tree,” the Challenge alum, 42, wrote via X on Friday, April 11. “It’s wild how fast some people can twist a moment into a false narrative.”
He added, “There’s real racism out there, weaponizing fake outrage for clicks cheapens it.”
Several hours earlier, Devenanzio appeared on Pop the Balloon Live and was asked to pick his ideal partner “to build a home” with, while looking across a lineup of multiple women.
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“She’s got really good toes,” he said, pointing to one of the ladies.”You’ve got really pretty toes, [and] you look like you sleep from a tree upside down.”
The camera subsequently panned to a Black woman dressed in a blue, checkered two-piece suit, who replied, “Me? What, are you talking about me?”
Many social media users subsequently called out Devenanzio for allegedly making a racist comment.
“That racism asf,” an X user wrote, as another added, “Yea CANCEL THIS S*** RIGHT NOW!”
A third, meanwhile, chimed in to write, “He never misses a chance to be racist.”
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Devenanzio was previously accused of sending a racist tweet to former Big Brother winner Taylor Hale, a woman of color, earlier this year.
“That yellow fruit man pinned a tweet to his profile at 8AM saying he was looking for engagement, and by 3PM you all gave him exactly what he asked for?” Hale, 30, wrote via X in February. “I don’t want to hear a single word if he somehow pops up on every show in the conversation.”
Devenanzio replied to Hale’s message with six banana emojis and a gorilla emoji, which many social media users perceived to be derogatory. He denied the accusations, claiming that an outside marketing agency had taken over his account to promote the release of a meme coin.
“I went back and forth with this company for a few days, putting tweets together that I approved being posted from my social media accounts,” Devenanzio told Variety at the time. “What I did not approve was them to go rogue and start responding to others. “There are certain emojis that are symbolic of different things in the crypto world, one being the guerrilla emoji, one being the ape emoji. They symbolize strength, symbolize going in full force. Basically, they made the ill-advised move to tweet one of these emojis at Taylor. So, immediate action was taken.”
He added, “I do not take this situation lightly at all. As soon as I was made aware of what happened, I reached out to Taylor because my main concern was making sure that she had as much clarity as she could have… I wanted to make sure she knew the truth.”
In her own conversation with Variety, Hale stressed that she “did not believe the intent of the tweet to be racist.”
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