YouSaid · the spoken record

Amandla Stenberg

lines on the record: 18
first: 2019-05-29
most recent: 2019-05-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“If you have been historically oppressed, then your love for yourself is your revolution. If you have historically been an oppressor, then your love for yourself and everyone else especially is a revolution. I don't think that we can go forth and fight anything if we are still fighting these internalized messages. And so to me, that's the first step. Imagine all that we can do if we are first just comfortable in our own skin. Thank you so much”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Making sure and demanding that we have a space in media and we have representation. Then in the future, little black girls who grew up hating their hair actually won't hate it in the first place. That they won't have anything to unlearn, that they won't have to find themselves again. After this time of challenging trial and error So to me, authenticity as activism is a base. It's the core of who I am as an activist. And if I didn't have this core, I wouldn't be able to do anything else. I'm still working on it. I don't have any of these ideas figured out all the way, you know. But I feel like if I can focus on this part of myself first, then the possibilities for how I can change my community, how I can go forth and change the world, those possibilities are endless. So basically, it's a call to action. If you have experienced oppression,”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And isn't that how we can actually transcend these barriers that we've constructed? These barriers of race and gender, which actually aren't real, but... Real to us now, so we have to figure out how to deal with them. Can't we transcend those barriers through vulnerability? I'm not saying that we all have to hold hands and sing kumbaya and everything's gonna be okay. I mean, I never want to invalidate the anger of oppressed groups because it's always valid. Saying that there's a lot of strength and vulnerability. Saying that oftentimes vulnerability is our strength, authenticity is our strength. My hope for the future That if we continue promoting this sort of authenticity and self love and pride, If we continue dismantling these negative Eurocentric beauty standards, And if we continue”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And like I know it sounds kind of cliche, and I'm going to break into the Barney theme song. But it's true and it's valid. When I am myself, Most authentically myself, free of self-hatred, free. Then I am also my most revolutionary. Takes vulnerability to be yourself. And it takes vulnerability to find strength in your own identity To me, vulnerability, authenticity, and power go hand in hand and hand When I am most authentically myself, I am also the self that people are more easily able to connect to. I also happen to be the best version of myself that happens to create the most controversy. And at the end of the day, Isn't that kind of how we connect to other human beings? Our authenticity and through our vulnerability”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the power in personal as political is this. Just by choosing to love myself, choosing to honor myself, and be comfortable in my identity in a society that tells me I shouldn't, I am starting a revolution. Just by deciding to be comfortable in who I am, I'm doing something revolutionary and I'm doing something political. My activism exists through the work of my bones against weight in the morning We have understood the bodies of white women before we have understood our own. We've memorized this sort of pink purity and learned dysmorphia because we are different. But we've also been gifted with this sacred unraveling because there is power in unearthing our limbs for ourselves. So this is what it means to me to be a new progressive. Is basically be yourself.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a society that disparages me, how can I be an activist for choosing to love myself regardless? By sending all my thoughts into the void that is the internet and actually receiving all this really incredible feedback from other teenage girls, other teenage black girls. I realized that they were all craving, and I was craving this sort of validation that it was okay to exist as myself. And I also realized something else, that my personal is also my political. You know, when we're talking about racism or sexism, we're not just doing it for fun and flexing our debate skills. These are things that are actually really personal to us. And we're fighting for our existences. We're fighting for the ability to be ourselves. And I think it can be easy to intellectualize and objectify these things and forget that.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also claim our own space since the artwork of people of color has been historically excluded from institutions. We also wanted to reclaim the word ho. Because the word ho, it's used against black women just for doing that thing, getting a little promiscuous. And that seemed really silly to me because I feel like all women should be free in their sexualities to be able to do whatever they want to do. And so we decided we were going to take that word and kind of spin it on its access, and that's how the phrase art ho came to be. Basically, there was this radical revolution against misogynoir, against internalized hatred, against all of these messages that we had received. And love for ourselves and for each other was our most powerful tool. So, how can I be an activist”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I let go of this supposed modesty, which is actually just this kind of ingrained notion that I've been instilled in me that it was not okay or acceptable for me to celebrate myself. And I joined this movement. And we started creating our own content. You know, there was something brewing within us. And so a few of these teenagers and me got together. And we created this thing called Art Hollective. An ArtHope Collective is this online platform where we get submissions from all kinds of kids of color and we post them to our larger audience and they get celebrated. We were trying to do with this collective is basically fight the stereotypes that black kids are not creative, that black kids are not sensitive, that they aren't artistic.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I started going on Tumblr and seeing these black teenage girls using hashtags like Black Girl Magic and Blackout, posting selfies and fighting against these systems by celebrating themselves. They were promoting their own growth, their own self-love, and they were using Tumblr to call out the media. And call out the media for pigeonholing us and stereotyping us They were basically using the power of social media to fight mainstream media. And when I was looking at these women who were posting all of this incredible material, I realized that I had never celebrated myself. And that was something that was so subconscious, but I had never celebrated who I am and been comfortable in my identity.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, these attitudes promote such a dehumanization against black women. And we end up existing in this sort of black hole, where we end up being, okay, so I want to be a feminist, but where do black women exist in the feminist movement? And I also want to speak out about racial inequality, but where do I exist in that space? I don't know. And I struggled with that and I struggled with not having that visibility. It's strange that celebrities can alter their bodies to resemble black ones. And yet the natural black female body is still maligned, it's criticized, it's scrutinized. But in response to all of these pressures, in response to all of these difficulties and these prejudices, black women have done something really incredible. And I first discovered it through the internet”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The stigma surrounding it are embedded in American infrastructure, as evidenced by the ways that black women are sexually assaulted and treated by police, an act that goes unreported by the media. And so as culture shifts and racial tensions are tested, it's important to question, do female black lives matter too? So I posted this piece. And I posted it because I was exhausted. I was exhausted of experiencing those things. I was exhausted of seeing them around me. And I realized that I just needed to speak out about it.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While white women are praised for altering their bodies, plumping their lips, and tanning their skin, black women are shamed, although the same features exist on them naturally. That's just one component of this web that surrounds black female sexuality, a web that oftentimes entraps black women when they attempt to claim sexual agency, ingrained into culture is the notion that black women at the intersection of oppression Are less than human and therefore unattractive. They become the symbols of pain and trauma and degradation. And oftentimes, when they are sexualized, it's from a place of racial fetishism. Indeed, black female sexuality is a tender spot. Tender with deep-rooted suppression and taboo, the effects of which are pervasive.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what I did in order to deal with that self-hatred is I decided to start writing. I wrote and I wrote and I journaled and I wrote some more. And in writing, I found my voice. In writing, I found my identity. And I found self love. And so I posted One of my writings to Instagram, because you know I am a teenager, and I received some negative feedback. I received some positive feedback. But the most important thing to me was that I received conversation And so I want to share one of those pieces with you. And so it goes like this. Black features are beautiful. Black women are not. White women are paragons of virtue and desire. Black women are objects of fetishism and brutality. This at least seems to be the mentality surrounding black femininity and beauty in society built upon Eurocentric beauty standards.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've realized that loving myself has been a gradual process. Coming into myself as a black person and as a woman has been a gradual process. When we grow up as black girls, we are told that we should be ashamed of our hair. We are told that we should be ashamed of our bodies and we should be ashamed of our voices because when we do speak out, oftentimes we're hit with that whole sassy, angry black woman trope. And we're fed these advertisements that tell us to straighten our hair. As if we straighten it, we'll be more civil, which is another way of just saying more white. And so I thought that I was kind of immune to these messages for a while. I thought that because the way my mom had raised me, that I wasn't thinking about them in this way. Until when I was about 16, I realized that it was actually combating a lot of self-hatred.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've grown up being a huge fan of Angela Davis when I had the opportunity to be on the cover of Day's magazine, I asked if I could have this quote written across my face. And we have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating societies. And I love Miss Davis, and I believe firmly in that. But it's been difficult for me to claim the space of an activist when the most revolutionary thing that I've done is type vigorously on a six by three inch touchscreen. And it's interesting. It's like my array of weapons are these different colored squares on an iPhone. It felt really silly to be called brave at first when I did most of my activism from the comfort of my bed with some popcorn and some old episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I have not led revolutions or led marches and resistances. I've tweeted. And I've left controversial comments on Instagram and I've posted my writings and talked about things such as Black Lives Matter, the dehumanization of Black female bodies. Cultural appropriation. I made a video for my history class, which is called Don't Cash Crop My Corn Rose. And I showed it to my history class. It was about how black hairstyles oftentimes get appropriated by white people, but then those black people get belittled and discredited. And I showed it to my history class, and they didn't like it that much. But then I posted it online and it went viral”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll do whatever you need me to do. So she started doing this thing where every two weeks she would get over my hair with a jar of pomade and a wide tooth comb. And she would put all my hair into these little neat twists. And as I grew up, I found new hairstyles, new ways to make my hair smaller, and consequently myself smaller. I straightened it. I put all kinds of chemicals in it. And God forbid that there was moisture in the air or that a droplet fell from the sky because I would be gone. I would vanish. Recently, I've started wearing my hair natural. And oftentimes I get the question, why do you wear your hair natural? Is it a part of your political agenda? And in some ways it is. I've recently been kind of pinned by media as a new progressive, as a poster child for social activism.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is it to be a modern activist? My name is Amanda Stenberg. My mom named me after the Zulu word for power. I'm an actress. I am an activist. I'm a high schooler with plans to attend NYU in the fall. Thank you When I was little, I used to wear my hair in this giant poof on top of my head. And I'd be chillin' on the playground, and kids would up to me, and they would take my hood and throw it over my hair, and then nestle on me like I was a giant pillow. And I hated it. I remember going home and being like, Mom, I'm a person, not a pillow. She was like, okay, what do you want to do? I was like, I want to change my hairstyle, but I don't want to wear it out because it's too big and it's too embarrassing, it's too frizzy, ew. So she was like, all right.”
2019-05-29 · Oprah's Super Soul · Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source