“The media does a great job at glorifying white privileged kids."
This 12-year-old American gun control activist explains why it's so important to lift the voices of women of color.
This 12-year-old American gun control activist explains why it's so important to lift the voices of women of color.
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00:00When we look on the news, we see the white kids who are making a difference and we see the white kids who are speaking out.
00:06But then we see some of the same black and brown kids who are saying the exact same thing and are not getting any attention for it.
00:12The media does a really great job at glorifying and putting white privileged kids, as you said, at the center of every movement.
00:21I've met so many black and brown girls who have experienced violence and who have to duck from bullets to get to school.
00:27But then we think of who we actually see on TV talking about those kinds of situations.
00:32There are so many young girls of color and women of color who have been working their entire lives, fighting for their voices to be heard,
00:42knowing that they don't have an equal chance at gaining that attention and getting that recognition, yet they still continue.
00:50I think that that resilience is so admirable, but it's sad when we don't hear their names and we don't know who they are.
00:57They're non-existent to us because when we look on the news, we see the white kids who are making a difference and we see the white kids who are speaking out.
01:07But then we see some of the same black and brown kids who are saying the exact same thing and are not getting any attention for it.
01:13So I think that it's the media's problem.
01:15How could we go about fixing it?
01:17I think that we can raise awareness and we can stop being so comfortable in the way we look at things.
01:23I think that we can challenge ourselves in the certain faces that we think of when we think of somebody who is successful, somebody who has a lot of money, someone who is educated.
01:31When I say those words, you might think of a white person, but maybe we can start thinking of other people.
01:37We can challenge ourselves in the way that we think, like I said.
01:39So I think that the media and TV shows and books and movies have conditioned us to think a certain way.
01:45So I think it's important if we start to look outside of that box because even I, growing up, have always wanted the white doll or have always wanted to be like the white princess.
01:54And just seeing how that is scary, seeing how that affects us.
01:57But I think that there's nothing, like you said, we can really do about the media because that's a really big issue and it's a culture.
02:04But I think we can do it ourselves and change the way that we think.