Chelsea Handler Says She's Not Racist Because She Dates Black People

During the Oscars, comedian Chelsea Handler took over The Huffington Post‘s Twitter feed to liveblog the show and promote Uganda Be Kidding Me, her new collection of essays about traveling through Africa with a group of friends. How lucky she was then that Lupita Nyong’o, a woman of Kenyan descent, won Best Supporting Actress and 12 Years a Slave, a movie about black people, won Best Picture? It’s a SEAMLESS opportunity to tie in a book promo!

People were understandably a little pissed that Handler used Nyong’o and 12 Years a Slave as a jumping point to sell her book just because all of them sort of (sort of, as in “just barely”) have to do with the same gigantic and extensively diverse continent, but Handler— in the tradition of Whitey going into Africa — is sticking to her guns and not apologizing.

Appearing on GMA to promote her book this morning, Handler said, “People are mad at me all the time. If I was worried about that then I would be spending a lot of time online. I’d rather be a little more productive. I’m not racist. I date a lot of black people, so that would be a difficult thing to explain to them.”