Hunger Games star criticizes artists for rampant appropriation of black culture

Hunger Games star Amanda Stenberg is calling out of today’s biggest pop stars.

Stenberg, 16, played Rue in the first installment of the popular film franchise, made a video for her high school history class in which she criticizes white celebrities and singers for borrowing from the black culture to make money.

The video was first posted on Stenberg’s Tumblr page several months ago, but has recently gone viral. The video is entitled “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows.

Stenberg said that cultural appropriation was rampant. She said for example, in 2010’ pop stars adapted black culture as a way of being edgy and gaining attentions, in 2013, Miley Cyrus twerks and uses black women as props, and then in 2014, Katy Perry uses Ebonics and hand gestures and eats watermelons while wearing cornrows before cutting inexplicably to a picture of Aretha Franklin, in the video called ‘ This is How We Do’.

Also shown in the video was the footage from Taylor Swift’s hip-hop influenced ‘Shake it Off’, Madonna with a grill over her teeth and video clips of Kesha and Kim Kardashian wearing cornrows.

Stenberg starred on Hunger Games with the lead star Jennifer Lawrence. She has also appeared in 2011’s Colombiana and on the Fox drama Sleepy Hollow.

Stenberg said at the end of the video that she have been seeing this question a lot on social media, and she think it’s really relevant :” What would America like if we loved black people as mush as we love black culture?”