Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
“So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.”
“I see the ways in which the media has sold me, and other light-skinned actors in general, as monolithic representations of a Blackness. It is so damaging and gross – honestly, it’s nasty.” The anger in her voice is palpable. “It’s just like sneaky racism.” She says that she is now very wary when people try to position her as representative of all Black people’s experiences. “I have only one sliver of experience, and that sliver is also drenched in light-skin privilege.”
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Photography: Miranda Barnes / Styling: Karla Welch
Ever since her breakout role in The Hunger Games, Amandla Stenberg’s career has gone from strength to strength. Here, the actor talks to Micha Frazer-Carroll about her involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, how the pandemic has made her re-evaluate her life and why she’s keenly exploring other creative avenues
Speaking to Amandla Stenberg feels strikingly like hanging out with a close friend, as well as interviewing a compelling voice from Hollywood’stwentysomething cohort. As we connect over Zoom, the conversational ground quickly spans from grumbling about media depictions of Gen Z to lamenting the elitist hierarchies that have emerged at queer Zoom parties. She also laughs a lot.
The laughter subsides and Stenberg reflects on the turbulent times that 2020 brought. She’s been Airbnb-ing and short-term renting for two years now – between New York, LA, Paris and Copenhagen – and has felt constantly unsettled since the pandemic hit. “I think sometimes I forget the lens through which I’m looking at things,” she says. “I can kind of get stressed out, wondering why I have so much anxiety, or why I’m in a constant state of paranoia and fear – and then I remember the circumstances.”
There are things to be grateful for, too, of course – she stresses that she doesn’t want to sound all “the pandemmy’s been so hard”, particularly since the actor, whose father is Danish, spent three months of the past year in the rolling hills of rural Denmark. “The thing I’m grateful for is definitely the opportunity to move more slowly – like actually thinking about my habits, the way I move through each day and what my priorities are.”…
