Friday, April 17, 2015
Hunger Games Star Amandla Stenberg Calls Out White Pop Stars for Appropriating Black Culture
The Mary Sue: Amandla Stenberg may already be well-known for roles like Rue in The Hunger Games and Macey Irving on Sleepy Hollow, but she’s still just a 16-year-old who sometimes has to do assignments for her history class. For a high school project earlier this year, Stenberg addressed the long history of white pop stars profiting off of black culture in her video entitled “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows:”
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I'm so excited that people are stepping out and speaking their mind about these kinds of issues, especially celebrities with even the tiniest bit of influence. It's important that this message is heard, because I believe that we are nearing the crux of a very major step in terms of equality. The hip hop and pop industries gear themselves towards younger people. Thus, younger people need to be told what to look out for in terms of demanding honest media and taking no shit from music labels that will do whatever it takes to make a couple more dollars off of Katy Perry's new single. If young people are educated enough to be aware of the kind of atrocities that are being committed against black culture, then the music industries and celebrities themselves would avoid appropriating black culture the way that they are currently are rampantly. It's simple supply and demand, which is why it's so important that these messages are shared with the youth who are downloading and supporting in the first place.
For a 16 year old, man this girl is smart. Stenberg made an incredible argument over how pieces of black culture are being taken by others and made into profit, which was incredibly eye opening to me. I have never really followed into hip hop or rap as I do not particularly like that kind of music, so I had never realized the extend of racism that occurs in that side of the music industry. I do have to say that I do not completely agree with her argument about hair styles being used against black culture. Odd hair styles have been repurposed into the high fashion world for years. I don’t see what is wrong with people having braids in their hair while walking down the runway in ridiculous designer clothes that no one can afford. Yes, cornrows are a mainly black hair style due to the texture of African American hair, but I firmly believe that that does not mean that no one else can cornrow their hair. I put my hair into small braids one day because I wanted to try it and see what it looked like. I cut my hair into odd haircuts because I wanted to. I don’t think that just because one culture identifies with a certain hair style means that anyone from another culture who styles their hair that way is automatically racist.
Well-researched, incredibly well-spoken, overall a fantastic video and I'm so happy it's gotten so much hype this week.
This also raises a bigger question for us as artists in a multi-cultural world: Is it ever okay to employ someone else's culture in our own art, and if so, when and how?
Dramaturgs across the country have been having heated conversations about cross-culturalism in the rehearsal room for years now. We are the ones most often called upon as the cultural advocates in the room, and are expected to have the appropriate information to inform a cast about the culture(s) represented in a particular play. Should we not be working on productions prominently featuring cultures other than our own? If we're doing our jobs correctly, dramaturgs should find the resources we need to learn more about the culture(s) and address the company's needs. That said, one's experience always informs one's perspective and artistic output; there's only so far you can go in understanding a culture without living in it your whole life.
There were people who told me, to my face, that I should not have been the dramaturg on Seven Guitars because I am not African American. I understand where they're coming from. I understand the weight of the cultural legacy that needed to be upheld in that production, particularly with an August Wilson play. Please, teach me how to be the best advocate I can be for cultures other than my own, so I can represent these cultures respectfully in my artistic work? The last thing I would ever want to do would be to appropriate someone else's culture in a disrespectful way for my own benefit. That said, I really don't want to work on Fiddler On The Roof for the rest of my life.
This was a really great video. Stenberg really researched everything she wanted to say and presented it in a way that wasn’t just bashing on people who do cultural appropriation. She explained why the hair styles and songs are important to the Black Culture and how they grew from their past and showed how upperclass white people took their culture and were viewed as fun and new while the African American singers who did the same things were shunned and forgotten. I have heard people throw around the term cultural appropriation for a while now and I never fully understood what it meant and how I would know if I was doing it. So the way Stenberg put it that cultural appropriation is when a style leads to racial stereotypes and generalizations by the person who made it, but it deemed as cool or funny when the privileged take it and that it occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture they are taking from. This really hit home because our culture has fallen so deep into appropriating Black Culture that I didn’t even know why exactly it was bad that we were wearing the hairstyles or making the types of music. But now I see the deep cultural past that these things come from and how it would be offensive to see the privileged take it and leave those who made it in the dirt.
Wow. I have so much respect for Amandla. Not only was she articulate, and clearly knew what she was talking about, but she was able to present her case in a way that did not attack anyone, or point fingers. In asking for people to invest more thought before they take on particular black cultural aspects, she addresses the heart of the problem - something few adults have done hitherto. It is the lack of thought and cultural comprehension that is truly the problem. The anger, and finger pointing, and the general unwillingness to own up to an offensive action generate these highly charged and inflammatory media-fueled arguments that will yield no real resolution. Presentations like Amandla's are respectful, but resolute, demanding careful thought.
As a young female, it is also empowering to see another young female speak with such conviction. Amandla exemplifies what my generation should be striving for, both in their questions and accomplishments.
Cultural appropriation of originally black styles is a huge issue, and has been for quite some time. Not only in clothing styles and fashion, but also in the music styles themselves. A lot of the white hip hop artists who are wearing cornrows and other primarily black fashion items are doing that for the same reason that they do hip hop or rap; to seem edgy. Jazz, blues and other less contemporary styles as well originated in the african american community, and were appropriated by white people. All that being said, none of that is okay, having a passion for the style is different than trying to use another culture as a means of applying the stereotype to yourself. The video captures this perfectly and was said so eloquently as well.
First off, I would like to congratulate Amanda on a very well done video. I've been seeing more and more white people around both at school and in Pittsburgh in general adopting these styles. While I do not have the authority to tell people how to do their hair, It's not right for other people to call this " a new urban trend" while black people have literally been doing their hair that way for years. It also comes down to stereotypes. Locs are a simple way to keep black hair, yet they are considered a dirty hairstyle. However, locs are only dirty if you're white, due to different makeups of hair. White hair will mat up if you don't wash it, but black hair works differently than that (or so I've been told). However, it's really unnerving to see how much cultural appropriation is acceptable. For instance, we had a CMU sponsored Holi event. Holi is a holiday, not a party. That's not to say that people can't celebrate the holiday, but you're can't just participate in the festivities and not understand the why they're celebrating. What got me more was that holiday was themed "Do or Dye". If you think about it, you'll realize how stupid that is. It's like hoping Christmas is Disney themes this year!
For me this falls in line into the culture grey area. I long for a day of equality where skin color isn’t a factor in our identity and how we treat people because at the end of the day we are all human beings with different colored shells. With that said our country has had a very interesting history. We got off to a rocky start and where the country is today is covert racism and we still are naturally separating ourselves rather that coming together and finding a mutual respect in our culture as a whole. It should be recognized that we are in a place in our society that treating something that was once looked down upon for being different to up and making it the “cool trend” is not morally right. But there exists a fine line from creating self-empowerment for a group of people to exclude other groups from letting it influence their lives. Because the more and more we say that certain groups can do this because it is disrespectful blocks us as a society from becoming one race of people. Maybe I have too much hope that one day this country can see everyone as the same race, American.
The message evoked from this video alone is already immensely impactful and eyeopening, but the fact that Amanda Stenberg is only 16 years old and is able to speak her mind this openly and poetically is a beautiful thing. It's crazy to me how naive and uniformed I feel I have been on this issue after watching Stenberg's video.
After listening to what Stenberg had to say, I felt disgusted as I watched Miley Cyrus's "We Can't Stop" music video, in which she clearly uses her all-black group of backup dancers to evoke the stereotypical image of black culture that society has created. It is something that I had completely overlooked when I had watched the video before, and now I can see that the entire video acts as a gross generalization of black people as well as of black culture as a whole. However, aside from this, I do wish that there were a way for people of all races and cultural backgrounds to honor black culture and to participate in the art of hip-hop, but without completely disregarding the humanity behind hip-hop culture.
Abby Jackman
Cameron Knight
This is so important! The thing about appropriation is that there is a fine line between it and appreciation, as Stenberg said. Appropriation occurs when the assimilation of a culturally specific behavior is copied without understanding or acknowledgment of the history. Stenberg's theoretical question--what America would look if we loved black people as much as we loved black culture--is so poignant and thought provoking. It illuminates greater tendencies of American culture.
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