Amandla Stenberg Addresses Cultural Appropriation

Just the other day I wrote about Amandla Stenberg and Willow Smith, praising them for utilizing their platform to speak out about social issues...and at such a young age. It's remarkable. It gives me immense pleasure to see these beautiful Black girls, who have grown up immersed in privilege, recognize the injustices that we, as people of color, face each and every day.

Yet and still, in the midst of our never-ending plight, people manage to infiltrate our struggle to ensue making a mockery of our culture in the name of "entertainment". Everybody wants to be Black until it's time to be Black. Just yesterday Teen Vogue featured Kylie Jenner on the cover and she was sporting dreadlocks. And within it's pages her friend rocked multicolored cornrows. Color me ignorant but I highly doubt that they would have featured a Black girl with locs on their cover or anywhere inside of their pages TBH. Wasn't there JUST a controversy due to 'Fashion Police''s Guiliana Rancic saying Zendaya looked as though she smelled of "weed and patchouli oil" because she dared to sport locs on a red carpet...mind you she looked elegant and SLEIGHED as only Zendaya can. I know she looked at photos of herself at the Oscars then at Guiliana like

There's a BIG difference between art and appropriation. Contrary to popular belief imitation isn't always the most sincere form of flattery. In this case it's condescending, self righteous, and entitled. At the very least you can take your privileged ass to a march, donate to a cause, and at least pretend to care about the war waged on those Black and Brown bodies from which you so callously siphon your "trendy and edgy" identity all whilst covertly telling us day in and day out that we don't matter. That our culture, heritage, style, and existence are only deemed acceptable when worn as a costume by White people. In the end all it boils down to is modern day blackface. You can put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day it's still a pig. It's very simple ladies and gents who lack melanin. Since the majority of your lot tends to feign ignorance when faced with backlash due to your covert racism and blatant appropriation of Black culture, here's a definitive and clear definition:

"What would America be like if we loved Black people as much as we love Black culture?" This is the question of the millennium! It always highkey amazes me, you know, the utter AUDACITY of Caucasian Americans to have adopted the moniker "American" but hyphenates everyone else as though they don't stem from Euro roots and hadn't stolen the land from whence the Native, native as in REAL, Americans laid their heads, murdered an entire people to cover their tracks, stole yet ANOTHER group of people from their homes, forced them into slavery because they had no sense of morality and couldn't do shit for themselves, THEN following the release of said people had the nerve to oppress them, discriminate against them, and tell them they can just "go back where they came from" like we ever asked to be plucked from our homes OR that YOU didn't come over here, disease riddled and entitled, coveting what didn't belong to you and calling yourselves the founding fathers of an already inhabited land. I'm SLEEP though. Just watch Amandla's video, "Don't Cash Crop On My Cornrows" in it's entirety below:

Amandla Stenberg you are a Black girl who ROCKS!

Natasha Marie