Posted by Kay.
It was Essence magazine’s Black Women in Hollywood event last week and Thandie was there doing the press call line-up wearing her #SayHerName T-shirt.
It was a big, pre-Oscar event with Hollywood’s finest women of colour. Thandie could have done the expected red carpet thing and been a fashion scene-stealer, wearing a fabulous Marco De Vincenzo, Aquazzura or Stella Jean frock, but instead she wore a simple black T-shirt given to her by the African American Policy Forum.
But the message and the meaning written on the T-shirt are everything but simple, these women’s names are a sad reminder of the truly unthinkable.
Said Thandie on our instagram. She told USA Today
“I think in film we have such an incredible influence over the public, and influence in the world. As black [entertainers] the stories we tell have the power to change people’s lives,” she said. “And the women that are named on this t-shirt are dead women who were dead at the hands of police enforcement in this country.”
They’re no longer alive and in death they have got to have the power they deserve. And I just think that for the good of humanity as a whole, not just for people of color, we have got to dig out the poison of violence against women of color by our law enforcement.”
As Thandie said, issues that groups like Black Lives Matter movement tackle are crucial for women as well as men. A report by the AAPF revealed black girls were disproportionately affected in schools too.
Thandie wearing #sayhername t-shirt with Oprah at Essence Magazine’s Black Women in Hollywood luncheon
“It’s not just men this happens to, (women) need our own Fruitvale Station, we need our own 12 Years a Slave if we want to get historical.
Cruelty against a woman is species suicide. And that’s why I see it all as being beneficial to humanity, not just to people of colour.”
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