The Hunger Games actress Amandla Stenberg on Saturday told anyone who believes they live in a post-racial society to open their eyes.
“Sorry to break it to you white hippies as blacks, we don’t. If you think of the world as post-racial, you’re obviously ignorant to the realities that black people face every day,” Stenberg told a press conference for The Hate U Give, the big-screen adaptation of Angie Thomas’ 2017 best-seller of the same name, at the Toronto Film Festival.
Stenberg plays the protagonist Starr in the YA movie adaptation, which is directed by George Tillman Jr. and is set for an Oct. 19 release by Fox 2000 Pictures. The Hate U Give portrays Starr as a prep school student turning to activism after she witnesses the shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer.
At the press conference, she argued that post-racial politics relies on a claim of color blindness that isn’t possible in an increasingly divided America.
“The notion that I don’t see color, it relies on the idea that we live in a post-racial society, which we don’t. We do not,” Stenberg insisted.
Stenberg also told the TIFF presser that racism is not about just using the N-word, but exists more subtly in today’s divided culture. “This film explores what racism looks like in today’s day and age. Often times it shows up as micro-aggressions, and those micro-aggressions come out and they demonstrate a lot of prejudice and internalized notions about blackness,” Stenberg said.
The Toronto Film Festival continues through Sept. 16.
