“Love Island” may be off the air, but there’s still drama brewing between two of its contestants, namely Olandria Carthen and Huda Mustafa. And trust us when we say, it’s been taking over timelines everywhere. Let’s get into it!
Suggested Reading
Things all popped off when Mustafa and her boyfriend Louis Russell decided to do a fun livestream with their fans recently. During one moment, they received a phone call from an unknown caller and decided to answer it while streaming. Once they picked up, a small voice could be heard lobbing a racial slur against Carthen.
“Olandria is a n—-r,” the person said.
But instead of getting upset or immediately chastising the person, both Mustafa and Russell laughed and hung up.
“Yo, what the f*ck. What did they say?” Mustafa said with a smile. “They said a bad word.”
Naturally, once that footage began to make the rounds on social media, both Mustafa and Russell got dragged online for making light of the moment and not coming to Carthen’s defense. (This problem with racist rhetoric and bullying was a previous major issue when the “Love Island” reunion aired in August between Mustafa’s fanbase and Carthen then, too.)
“This is just so weird & disgusting, Huda and her man was on live and someone called Olandria the n word with hard r and they laughing at it,” wrote one user on X/Twitter.
“huda laughing at black women being called the hard r whilst dating a black man & “raising” a MIXED child. nothing could ever make me like that woman,” said another.
Added another, “huda… laughing at someone calling a BW a racial slur ??? bitch you are a horrible human being and a person.”
Fellow “Love Island” castmate and Carthen’s friend Michelle “Chelley” Bissainthe also spoke out against the moment, sharing her own experience as a Black woman and conveyed that racism was never okay or something to joke about. She encouraged people to “use their voice and stand up for what’s right, no matter the time, place, or who’s watching.”
In an attempt to do damage control, Mustafa hopped on her Instagram story to defend herself, calling the moment “clickbait.” She also went on to say that they didn’t really hear anything except the slur but they did so, they hung up. Mustafa also added that she didn’t condone racism and only laughed because it was an “awkward” and “inappropriate” moment. Russell expressed similar sentiments on his Instagram as well.
Yet and still, that wasn’t enough to keep them from being taken through the social media mud and many fans were waiting with bated breath to see if and how Carthen herself would respond. Well, they got their answer on Wednesday when she posted a lengthy statement on her Instagram.
In it, she made it clear that she didn’t condone any sort of racism and asserted that the n-word is “never acceptable. Not in anger. Not as a joke, not ever.” Carthen also said that she wasn’t going to let the moment derail her and that she was going to use it as an opportunity for “real accountability and awareness.” She then challenged “those who participated” in the livestream and their followers to donate to organizations like UNCF, NAACP, and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
Now that’s how you flip and reverse a negative into a positive and make people really course correct.
Eventually and thankfully, Mustafa responded to Carthen’s post and issued a formal apology to her. She once again reiterated that she didn’t condone the incident and also revealed that she’d me making a donation NAACP. She also followed in Carthen’s footsteps and said she would be sharing a list of other organizations that “support racial equity, education and mental health support” for her followers to donate to.
Straight From 
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.