Fashion

feature: zoë kravitz talks racial identity in the august issue of nylon magazine

July 13, 2015

Check out Zoë Kravitz new editorial in Nylon Magazine. The LOLAWOLF front-woman is the cover star of the magazine’s new “Denim” issue; and in the August issue, Kravitz addresses racial identity: “As one of few black kids in her predominately white school, she remembers saying things like, “I’m just as white as y’all,” to her classmates. “I identified with white culture, and I wanted to fit in,” she says. “I didn’t identify with black culture, like, I didn’t like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn’t into hip-hop music. I liked Neil Young.” But as time went on, her views shifted. “Black culture is so much deeper than that,” she says, “but unfortunately that is what’s fed through the media. That’s what people see. That’s what I saw. But then I got older and listened to A Tribe Called Quest and watched films with Sidney Poitier, and heard Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. I had to un-brainwash myself. It’s my mission, especially as an actress.” She also discuss her experience of being black in Hollywood, stating: “In the last Batman movie [The Dark Knight Rises], they told me that I couldn’t get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren’t ‘going urban,’” she says. “It was like, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I have to play the role like, ‘Yo, what’s up, Batman? What’s going on wit chu?’” See the images below.

By Alexander Aplerku, AFROPUNK Contributor

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