Amandla Stenberg Responds To Online Racist Harassment In New Music Video
Happy late Juneteenth to all those who celebrate, and especially to those who don’t. Following an especially intense past couple of weeks of racist remarks on social media by online bullies targeting The Acolyte and the people behind it, lead actress Amandla Stenberg (she/her, also they/them) has responded in the best way she knows how: through art.
The 25-year-old posted a music video, fully produced by her, on her social media channels speaking directly to them. The lyrics essentially read like an essay, addressing some of the hypocrisy and bigotry of the people going after her, weaponizing her comments from an old interview where she spoke against racism and asked for empathy towards Black people. She added the caption:
Happy Juneteenth 🖤
and to those who are flooding me with intolerable racism—
since it took me 72 hours on my laptop to make this song and video, u got 72 hours to respond. and I expect choreo!!
View this post on Instagram
The video was posted on Juneteenth, the U.S. holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865. Members of the Star Wars and Acolyte family replied in the comments with their messages of support for Amandla Stenberg. So far, we’ve noticed Dafne Keen (Jecki Lon, who said “Wokelyte unite!!”), Manny Jacinto (Qimir, who simply posted some emojis), and Krystina Arielle (host of The High Republic Show on the official YouTube channel, who wrote “I love you so much”).
Fair criticisms of The Acolyte are not at play here. Harassment and racist remarks by so-called fans are. The comments will be monitored and those deemed abusive or harmful will be taken down.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
