‘The Acolyte’ Lead Amandla Stenberg Responds To Critics With Original Juneteenth Song, Writes Off Unhappy Star Wars Fans As “Silly Racists”
In admittedly one of the more unique ways of responding to one’s critics seen in recent memory, The Acolyte lead Amandla Stenberg has authored an original song in order to express her discontent with those Star Wars fans who are unhappy with the series’ direction.
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Titled Discourse, the track was released by the actress via her personal Instagram on June 19th – otherwise known as Juneteenth – and was penned, as explained by Stenberg herself, as a ‘clap back’ to her supposedly racist critics.
“Happy Juneteenth 🖤,” wrote The Acolyte star. “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, u got 72 hours to respond. And I expect [choreography]!”
Played over black and white footage of Stenberg both singing and dancing to the song as she walks around the streets of Brooklyn, the song begins with the actress clarifying that her previous admission that “making white people cry” was the goal of her 2018 film The Hate U Give was meant as a call to empathy rather than a desire to see said demographic genuinely hurt.
“I’m going viral on Twitter again / Open up the news to find some interesting things / 20 million views / Interview from 2018 / With Trevor [Noah] 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 / 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”.
To this end, Stenberg then opines, “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.”
Following this, the song enters into the first utterance of its simple chorus: “We so bored / don’t f–k with yo discourse.”
From there, Stenberg then takes issue with the evolution of the word ‘woke’ from a term used exclusively by black people in reference to keeping appraised of the different ways in which they were being socioeconomic oppressed to one used by everyone as short hand adjective meaning ‘performatively liberal’.
“And now you listening imma tell you something fascinating / They spinning ‘woke’ bastardize it and appropriate it / last I recall woke was something we created / Speak truth to power / Keep an eye out for you silly racists / And now they use it to describe anything they threatened by / Remember when [Childish] Gambino put it in the zeitgeist? [via his 2016 song Redbone] / It was all about the people recognizing bigotry / The power of community / Not fodder for your clickbait”.
“Speaking of which, journalists, I’m looking at you / Did you forget it’s your job to provide the truth? / Spreading divisiveness mining the metrics and date / Seem you gave up all your ethics for money and views / And I can tell that the people are tired / And the kids don’t trust anything that they view / We can learn something from their discernment / the future’s coming and it’s always the youth.”
After a final run of the chorus, Stenberg then closes out the song with a personal insight into why she chose to write it in the first place.
“My sis said don’t let it get down my spirit / But I’m sick and f–kin tried of suppressing my rage / 400 years of taking their bullshit / To compartmentalize like my ancestors had to encage / If you don’t confront the pain that you live with / It’ll manifest as addiction disease and hate / I’ve seen the infection repressing can give ya / I’m not goin to be the next one sent to an early grave.”
As the old adage goes, “It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for ’em.“
The fifth episode of The Acolyte is currently set to tap into the Force on June 25th.
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