Amandla Stenberg is used to inflammatory comments spanning her career. From Hunger Games fans when she was a child who were disappointed Rue was Black, despite being so in the books to her latest dual roles in Star Wars: The Acolyte. The award-winning actress has developed a thick skin and a sense of humor along the way to deal with her critics.
Now, after a flood of “intolerable racism” that she’s received following the release of The Acolyte, Stenberg has posted a sand and choreographed video.
“Happy Juneteenth,” Stenberg posted on her Instagram. “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, [you] got 72 hours to respond. and I expect choreo!”
“I’m going viral on Twitter again, open up the news to find some interesting things / 20 million views / interview from 2018 / with Trevor the king when I was a teen / I was running from city to city to speak on a story / you know the one: police murdering a black boy / my people cried in theaters finding release / white people cried they could see us as human beings,” the song starts.
“Trevor ask what I want the people to know / I say white people crying was the goal / If they could take one thing what would it be? / I say empathy / ooooo that’s why they mad at me? / they splice lines make hate they recognize / make it look like the same propaganda they spew / cuz they conflate our pain with violence / and try to weaponize everything that we do / the desperation of oppressors is rising / and now they holding onto any of thing they can use / If you rely upon misinformation / that tells me you’re afraid of the truth.”
The song refers to a clip from an interview with Trevor Noah where they talk about her movie at the time, The Hate U Give, based on the best-selling book. In the interview, Stenberg said that “white people crying actually was the goal” and that is being reused and falsely credited to The Acolyte.
The latest Star Wars project earned positive reviews from critics out of the gate, hitting an 85 percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. However, it’s been hit with review bombing, and its audience score has sunk to only 14 percent. Even funnier (or sadder depending on how you look at it) some “fans” accidentally review bombed the 2008 horror film Acolytes.
New episodes of The Acolyte premiere weekly on Tuesdays only on Disney+.
