“I was uneducated. I was unread.”
Florence Pugh has done some reflecting and is now apologizing for cultural appropriation — including a time when she wore cornrows and a beanie “painted with the Jamaican flag colors.”
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The actor posted a note to her Instagram, where she recalled this moment from when she was 17. “Proud of my Rastafarian creation, I then posted about it the next day with a caption that paraphrased the lyrics to Shaggy’s song ‘Boombastic’. I am ashamed of so many things in [these] sentences,” she wrote, adding that it was “cruel” she “forgot” about it and “had no idea how many people were offended.”
Florence admitted, “Growing up as white and privileged allowed me to get that far and not know… Stupid doesn’t even cut it, I was uneducated. I was unread.”
Toni Anne Barson / WireImage
She also recalled wearing bindis and henna, which she says “became a trend” “over the summer fo 2017.” “No one cared about the origin,” she wrote. “A culture was being abused for profit. I felt embarrassed… I actually wasn’t being respectful in how I was using it. I wore this culture on my terms only, to parties [and] at dinner. I too was disrespecting the beauty of the religion that had been taught to me those years ago.”
“I am truly sorry to all of you that were offended for years or even just recently,” she added. “I cannot dismiss the actions I bought into years ago, but I believe that we who were blind to such things must acknowledge them and recognize them as our faults, our ignorance, and our white privilege, and I apologize profusely that it took this long.”
Bertrand Rindoff Petroff / Getty Images
She posted her note with the caption, “To see change, I must be part of the change.”
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