Zendaya Is Hollywood’s Acceptable Black Girl — And That’s Complicated
Zendaya is one of the biggest Black actresses in Hollywood and she’s only 29. What is it that makes everyone love her? Emotional safety. And being the acceptable Black girl. #zendaya #hollywood #entertainment
42 Comments
You can't help but see a movie she's in, shes in EVERYTHING
Not gonna lie, she’s not that great of an actress in my opinion 🤷🏾♂️…
That's like a $50 mils paycheck or so if u add up all those big projects for the year. She is doing alright lol
Funny her parents are the two most ordinary looking interracial couple and they produced a beautiful specimen and a likable girl doing big things
"Partly because she's lightskinned", you're funny. It's the "partly" I find hilarious.
First of all she is NOT black.
White women font birth black children and thats an INSULT to us Sistas to even say that!
She is mixed and let her be
I do like Zendaya though lol
She is bi-racial and that's it. She knows this and this is not groundbreaking. Do you think the USA would ever accept a real black girl nerdy, cool, sexy? I don't. Even Beyonce knows that and has lightened up over the years.
She is NOT black she is biracial. 😅 😂
Now she is. She had a hard road going through.
Did anyone else catch that line in the Spike Lee movie Highest to Lowest when the son is going overboard about his new crush and he refers to her as a “light skinned Zendaya”…. Like Wowww,🙄 even the biracial girl is too dark.
Barely Black is what I call her
She's not Black. She is not the default setting for Black women. The former racist One Drop Law has long been abolished. Her mother is white. She can be the default setting for white and/or bi-racial women because that's what she is. She is not Black.
Zendaya is not black, she is biracial.
She can play a variety of roles and races just like the Rock; that universal look that different people can relate to.
She passed that old brown paper bag test
She is really talented in spite of her beauty
Zendaya wants to retire after she starts a family. I believe they are grooming chase infiniti to take her slot. Remember I said that when she blows up
Zendaya is consistent. And people can fall in love with consistency. So even when she takes a new project bigger things and she stepped outside the box she still consistent with how she carries herself. How hard she works. She’s a great actress. Like you said she’s predictable and we love that. She could definitely be on Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep one day
For the longest time I thought she was white.
I have to be honest here. I am a black biracial woman and I never felt in any way drawn toward Zendaya. I click on videos like this to try and understand what other people are seeing. I was raised in a totally different environment than most Americans. Which I did not find out until I was an adult. So my opinions and perspectives are not always in sync with the mainstream. So take what I say with a grain of salt. I have educated myself on beauty standards but more specifically how society is trained to elevate certain people over others. In my opinion what we are seeing with Zendaya has more to do with a cultural priming that existed during her rise to fame. Growing up in the 90s/ 2000s I never knew anyone else who was biracial but as I said I was in a parochial environment.
Suddenly when I turned 30, biracial people were everywhere. Still rarely seen in my everyday life but all over the media and social media apps. We were constantly framed in white supremacist friendly narratives. I saw thousands of white people who never studied anything about race flock to biracial women’s defense about not being called “black but biracial.” I noticed in those situations the goal seemed to be to shame mono racial black women for asserting their opinions about biracial people and race in general. On top of this black men who had internalized the white beauty standards joined in on the bullying.
I would love to say that I think people’s obsession with Zendaya comes from some organic place. But I know better. Because fame is not some mysterious rain from the gods of stardom and talent. Fame is about luck, timing and amplification. It’s always about small decision makers (mostly white and male) who decide who gets elevated in society and for what reason. It’s typically to serve a narrative that they want to amplify in society. Zendaya may fit a particular archetype of “biracial” that American media wants to elevate. I also noticed GenZ has sort of a weird worshipful group mentality toward specifically biracial women online.
I will withhold my judgment until I see more of Zendaya in different roles but as it stands right now I will file this under American myth formation.
Emotional safety ???wtf . Why is it that black people always talk about her skin color more than they talk about her talent , her talent took her where she is now . Black people , we sure as hell hate our own . Emotional safety my A**SS
Toure, I find your commentary regarding Zendaya is quite troubling. What's so awe inspiring about a black woman who looks White gaining favor with a white audience? Of course, white people are not threatened by a black person who does not call them out for their racist, stereotypical views. What's new about that? It's only those of us who are unapologetically black, who could give two f** about being embraced by European culture, that they find appalling, unattractive, and intolerable. I am not, and have never been, impressed by passable blacks who do nothing to elevate the culture.
"Her husband Tom Holland"
Sir, you're a journalist.
She’s seems like genuine sweetheart.
To most of the world, she is not "BLACK" The world agrees she has African Ancestry, but to categorically blanket her as "BLACK" is misleading. The vestige of the USA slave economic model of the "one drop rule" is disappearing in the global biography of ancestral multi-racial peoples. There is no country in West Africa where the majority of the people look like Zendaya…..
Most people seem to forget that Zendaya started in K.C. Undercover. She was part of a Black household.
Congratulations, she deserves everything she has.and more! 🎉
She has no light skinned privilege, she is biracial, biracial and light skinned are two completely different things. Stop the con games 🧐
‼️‼️‼️SPOILER ALERT ‼️‼️‼️ for The Drama.
⛔2:13 – 2:53⛔
She’s black?
Her biggest movies had her in supporting roles, does that count for “bringing in”?
She’s attractive. That’s pretty much the beginning and end of why anyone is in movies or tv shows
I honestly never felt anyway about her. This made me want to keep a distance from her(fan wise). I'm 41. So there's that.
Spoiler alert.
Bruh you just spoiled the fucking movie
She’s not the acceptable black girl, she’s the acceptable biracial. We need to stop calling everyone who has a drop of black in them black. It doesn’t make sense. Since she is also half white you could call her white by your logic, it’s just that that community doesn’t accept anyone with a lick of white in them as white, so why should we?
Hey, I could be her 'whiter full-on brother, and I never received any kind of advantage or privilege, so I don't know what this is about. Did her parents have money? It doesn't matter what color you are; you get the entire privy package if you have enough money. I can't even believe she was considered for the Anita Hemings role. That would have been Halsey's. The choice to cast Zendaya as Hemings was not based on reality.
Please don’t include spoilers to a movie still in theaters, please
Zendaya is one of the people that play into the part of black erasure. She benefits from being a non-black woman with a slightly ethnic look, but she isn’t a black woman and should not be categorized as such.
Thanks for the no warning spoiler for the drama..🥹🫠😑
You forgot to mention that she's, for better or worse, also "politically safe." I don't think she's come out as being on either side of the political aisle, although I assume and hope she is not a trumper (please). I'd love her use her popularity to speak out against the genocide, etc., but she's so likable, it's hard to be mad that she doesn't.
She is also starring in Shrek 5 as well 😮