A new voice has entered the ongoing conversation about black culture appropriation (or “misappropriation” as it’s often called).
“Hunger Games” star Amandla Stenberg (who plays Rue in the franchise) posted a nearly five-minute video detailing how white stars since the early 2000s have adopted the hair, speech, clothing and dance of black culture without acknowledging their origins and the struggles of the community.
In the video, “Don’t Cash Crop On My Cornrows,” the 16-year-old actress begins by explaining that cornrows, although they’ve become mainstream thanks to supermodels wearing them on the runways and reality stars like Kendall Jenner and Kim Kardashian sporting them, serve a bigger purpose in the upkeep and maintenance of black hair.
“Cornrows are a really functional way of keeping black textured hair unknotted and neat but with style — so you can see why hair is such a big part of hip-hop and rap culture,” she said.
Over the years, as hip-hop and R&B grew in popularity, other stars began taking on the images broadcast on mainstream media. Stenberg points out Christina Aguilera and Fergie, both of whom have famously worn cornrows, as well as Madonna, who likes wearing grillz.
“Pop stars and icons adopted black culture as a way of being edgy and gaining attention,” she added. “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.”
While R&B and hip-hop gained noticeable new stars, high-tech proof of violence against blacks, such as video recordings, began to rise. Stenberg brings up well-known cases and victims Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice to make a point.
“Celebrities spread awareness and shared condolence or at least some did,” she said. “As Azealia Banks observed in her tweets, white musicians who partook in hip-hop culture and adopted blackness failed to speak on the racism that comes along with black identity.”
Banks has famously feuded with Australian rapper Iggy Azalea over this same subject.
“The line between culture appropriation and culture exchange is always going to be blurred,” she says. “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. Appropriation occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture they are partaking in.”
She signs off by posing a question she’s often asked herself: “What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?”
A request for comment from Perry’s rep was not immediately returned.