This spring, Amandla Stenberg, star of The Hunger Games, made headlines when a school project about appropriation went viral. In the video “Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows,” Stenberg called out white people who appropriate black culture.
“In the 2010s, pop stars and icons adopted black culture as a way of being edgy and gaining attention,” Stenberg said. “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.”
And she’s not finished.
Over the weekend, Stenberg found her way to Kylie Jenner’s Instagram page and commented on a photo in which the youngest Kardashian was posing in cornrows.
Stenberg left a comment for the world to see, proving her previous point in “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows,” and even mentioned the hashtag #whitegirlsdoitbetter:
when u appropriate black features and culture but fail to use ur position of power to help black Americans by directing attention towards ur wigs instead of police brutality or racism #whitegirlsdoitbetter
Of course the comment probably went over the youngest Jenner’s head, because her retort was nothing but playground rhetoric:
@amandlastenberg Mad if I don’t, Mad if I do. Go hang w Jaden or something
The Jaden Jenner is referring to is Jaden Smith, Will Smith’s son, with whom Stenberg went to the prom.
https://twitter.com/amandlastenberg/status/620443549532876801
There’s really no point in attempting to school Jenner, who barely has a high school education. Jenner has already become famous because of her big-lip-making challenge, as well as attempting to emulate her half-sister Kim Kardashian with butt implants. But in the words of Paul Mooney, “Everybody wanna be a n—ga, but nobody wanna be a n—ga.”