Amandla Stenberg Calls Out Kylie Jenner For Her Cornrows And We Think That Was A Waste Of Time

I have been talking about Kylie Jenner a lot, I mean twice in a week, what is wrong with me? The last post we did we talked about Kylie and her new extension line and the post was pretty much out of good fun however this time the topic is a little bit more serious.

Recently Kylie posted the above picture showing off her corn rows and barely there full figure. While many of her followers thought she looked cute some of them didn’t, including Amandla Stenberg who is the 16 year old actress who played the Rue in The Hunger Games.

Here is what Amandla had to say about Kylie’s picture:

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.”

Kylie wasn’t having it and she gave probably the best response she could drum up at the time:

“Mad if I don’t, Mad if I do…. Go hang w Jaden or something”

As you may recall Jaden went to prom with Amandla a few months ago:

My question is why in the world do we continue to get people driven by social attention to fight our battles. I get it, Amandla probably felt it was appropriate to call Kylie out because the Kardashian Jenners are known for cultural appropriation and cultural inappropriateness.

But lets be really honest. Does Kylie have the mental capacity to do anything else other than appropriate black culture through social media?

That might seem as a clear diss to the soon to be legal 18yr old, but it is a valid question. What does she know about helping black Americans, racism, civil rights or police brutality? You cannot expect a teenager like Kylie to understand the value of the culture she tries to mimic.

Kylie does what she does best, she gets corn rows and she dates 25 yr old rappers, that is the extent of her media repertoire.

In other words we spend a lot of energy policing how white girls wear their hair, and how fashion moguls take our culture for their own financial gain.

I get it, sometimes things are unfair and we want to talk about it and create noise about it. But how much longevity does that have? We all also have the power to celebrate our culture in so many ways using the very tools Kylie uses to promote herself.

I have said it before and I will say it again, if you aren’t rocking your bantu knots and corn rows then do not complain when someone else from another race or even culture does.

If you are on Instagram watching young black women shaking it for the gram in nothing but underwear and a bra and you share that mess to your time line, you are not helping our cause either and you shouldn’t even comment on this post.

If you yourself have 50,000 followers based on coonish behavior you are not representing our culture in a way that ought to be celebrated.

The dark skin models putting out skin care routines, make up tutorials in their 15 second allotted time on Instagram, kudos to them.

The black women who share pictures of them traveling to far away places with their natural hair flying in the wind, kudos to them. The students who do vlogs about study time abroad in Africa and other parts of the world for the world to see kudos to them.

The girl down the street that paints her heart out and shows her work off on FB in hopes for one or two shares and to the people that share her work, kudos to them as well. The natural hair blogger, the natural hair vlogger, the movie makers, the poets, the artists, the musicians and the teachers working hard to show what we are about all deserve our attention.

In other words there are plenty of things we can use our own energy, and platforms for other than Kylie and her cornrows. Amandla gave Kylie more power with her words than she deserved. She would have been better off encouraging another sista making a fool of herself shaking it for the gram. Comment below if you agree!