I bet that L’Oreal is having some serious regrets fabout firing model Munroe Bergdorf from their latest diversity campaign. Since the news of L’Oreal making it known that they believe calling someone racist is actually worse than being racist—Bergdorf has been making a media splash.
You can find her speaking about anti-Blackness on her local news channel, walking runways, speaking with Teen Vogue, being retweeted by Janet Mock, and most recently modeling with Rain Dove for beauty brand Illamasqua.
And she deserves all the praise. She spoke out against racism and got fired for it. Further proof that in our current society, capitalism sees Black bodies as disposable when they can’t be in line with their respectability politics. Bergdorf made a powerful statement in her most recent project with Dazed. She appeared on video reciting LGBTQ icon Maya Angelou’s amazing poem “Still I Rise.”
It. Is. Everything.
Watch @MunroeBergdorf, the model fired by L’Oreal, recite Maya Angelou’s powerful poem ‘Still I Rise’. pic.twitter.com/YPKv8Qb9u2
— Dazed (@Dazed) September 14, 2017
Still I Rise; Maya Angelou, 1928 – 2014
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
What Do You Think?