Chet Hanks is putting his foot down against cultural appropriation — at least when it’s white supremacists and racists appropriating “white boy summer” for hate speech and memes.
On Instagram, Hanks (son of Tom and Rita Wilson) ostensibly responded to a recent report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracked the spread of “white boy summer” among extremist groups online.
“White boy summer was created to be fun, playful, and celebration of fly white boys who love beautiful queens of every race,” Hanks wrote. ”Anything else that it has been twisted into to support any kind of hate or bigotry against any group of people is deplorable and I condemn it. I hope that we all can spread love to each other and treat each other with kindness and dignity.”
Hanks first coined and popularized the “white boy summer” slogan in 2021, riffing off older memes like “Christian girl autumn” and Megan Thee Stallion’s “hot girl summer.” From the get-go, Hanks — who’s gone viral multiple times for speaking in an Afro-Caribbean patois — did his best to keep the phrase as far away as he could from hate speech or racist undertones.
In the original (now deleted, but preserved on YouTube) “white boy summer” Instagram video, he said, “I’m not talking about, like, Trump, you know, Nascar-type white. I’m talking about me, Jon B., Jack Harlow-type white-boy summer.” And in the inevitable “White Boy Summer” song and music video, Hanks prominently displayed a shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Stop Hate.”
After 2021, “White Boy Summer” largely faded into the cultural background, though Hanks did try to revive it earlier this year after going viral with a screen grab of him explaining the Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef to his more famous dad. But as the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, “white boy summer” has remained a pretty consistent meme among extremist groups since 2021.
According to the report, groups like the Proud Boys, White Lives Matter, and neo-Nazi Active Clubs have used the slogan to “spread propaganda, recruit new members, and facilitate targeted hate campaigns including acts of vandalism and hate incidents.” These posts on platforms like Telegram “surge during the summer months,” the organization said, while also noting that, though “white boy summer” began as an American phenomenon, it has since spread to international extremist groups. Just this past June — not long after Hanks proclaimed 2024 would be a “white boy summer” — a “white boy summer” flag was unfurled at the far-right Turning Point USA conference, and hats emblazoned with the phrase were thrown out to the audience as well.
