Needless to say, but Daniel Kaluuya is receiving well-deserved praise nowadays for his outstanding portrayal of Chris in the horror-comedy film, Get Out. For many of us, he successfully captured those subtle [and explicit] elements of the black experience in America. Samuel L. Jackson didn’t necessarily think so but Daniel had a response for that. In a candid GQ interview, the Get Out lead star opens up about his personal experiences with identity in the black community, and the unknown police brutality against black people in London.
“People say 'you’re too black’ then I come to America and they say, ‘You’re not black enough.’ I go to Uganda, I can’t speak the language. In India, I’m black. In the black community, I’m dark-skinned. In America, I’m British.” Interestedly enough, Daniel Kaluuya is the son of Ugandan immigrants, and not only has he been approached with blatant racism mirroring the party scene in Get Out, but he still deals with the overrated and depthless question, ‘What is it like for a black actor?’ in interviews.
The British star also mentions how it is not necessarily mainstream media to hear about police brutality in London. “Police would round up all these black people, get them in the back of vans, and wrap them in blankets so their bruises wouldn’t show when they were beat. That’s the history London has gone through.” In the U.K., black people are more likely to be detained with excessive force and left to die at the hands of neglectful officers. Just last month, we reported on protests taken place throughout Paris for the justice of 22-year-old Black youth, Theo, that was a victim of police brutality. Sounds similar to our own experiences huh?
Photo: The Sun
“The frustrating thing, bro- in order to prove that I can play this role, I have to open up about the trauma that I’ve experienced as a black person,” says Daniel, “I have to show off my struggle so that people accept that I’m black.”
It’s interesting to see how the perception of the being black within our own community can often hinder how we view our collective wearisome experiences as if being black is an experience limited to African Americans. Earning black credibility among our peers shouldn’t be something we have to prove to one another because there is no standard for blackness.
