Hunger Games Actress Calls Out Taylor, Katy and Miley
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That’s the question 16-year-old Amandla Stenberg, the actress most known for her role as Rue in “Hunger Games,” left viewers in a video she made on the relevance of black culture and its appropriation by mass media.
The wisdom Stenberg shared was part of a project she and another classmate created for their history class, which Stenberg later published to her Tumblr page. As a result, she powerfully schools her classmates -- and the public -- on the history of black hairstyles and hip-hop, their merger with mainstream music and how this has ultimately led to the (mis)appropriation of black culture.
Stenberg says artists like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus are examples of white mainstream musicians whose music videos are proof that cultural appropriation runs rampant.
“Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated but is deemed as high-fashion, cool or funny when the privileged take it for themselves,” Stenberg explains in her video, appropriately titled “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows.”
“Hip hop stems from a black struggle, it stems from jazz and blues, styles of music African-Americans created to retain humanity in the face of adversity,” Stenberg said. “On a smaller scale but in a similar vein, braids and cornrows are not merely stylistic. They’re necessary to keep black hair neat.”
Such an intelligent young woman, To think at only 16 she can understand a topic many miss the point/lack the competence to understand.
Jeez, when you're 12-16, puberty feels like an entire lifetime, but when you're an adult, you swear kids go through it in like a month. It's just like "oh woah, wtf, you're like a proper person now. Look at you, thinking and ****, and then voicing those thoughts."
look @ her preaching the good word.
if only the white gays that are sure to come in here pressed like button downs on a Friday night would listen to the truths this young woman speaks.
Jeez, when you're 12-16, puberty feels like an entire lifetime, but when you're an adult, you swear kids go through it in like a month. It's just like "oh woah, wtf, you're like a proper person now. Look at you, thinking and ****, and then voicing those thoughts."
Hunger Games Actress Calls Out Taylor, Katy and Madge
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Hunger Games star Amandla Stenberg is calling out several of today's biggest pop stars.
The 16-year-old actress, who played Rue in the first installment of the popular film franchise, recorded a video for her high school history class in which she criticizes white celebrities and singers for borrowing from black culture to make money. The video, entitled "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows," was posted to her Tumblr page several months ago but has recently gone viral.
"[In the 2010s,] pop stars and icons adopted black culture as a way of being edgy and gaining attention," Stenberg says. "In 2013, Miley Cyrus twerks and uses black women as props, and then in 2014, in one of her videos called 'This Is How We Do,' Katy Perry uses Ebonics and hand gestures and eats watermelons while wearing cornrows before cutting inexplicably to a picture of Aretha Franklin. So as you can see, cultural appropriation was rampant."
The video features clips of Kesha and Kim Kardashian wearing cornrows and Madonna with a grill over her teeth. Footage from Taylor Swift's hip-hop influenced "Shake It Off" video is also shown
She also called out Iggy and agreeing on Azealia's comments on Iggy.
look @ her preaching the good word.
if only the white gays that are sure to come in here pressed like button downs on a Friday night would listen to the truths this young woman speaks.
'This Is How We Do,' Katy Perry uses Ebonics and hand gestures and eats watermelons while wearing cornrows before cutting inexplicably to a picture of Aretha Franklin.
I disagree with her, honestly a lot of this cultural appropriation stuff is just a trend Tumblr people like to speak about. I doubt some of these people have even taken a sociology course yet they'll speak on cultural appropriation so freely.