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Demi Lovato’s time in quarantine has had the songstress under serious reflection about her life, embarking her in quite a soul searching adventure down the depths of what us normies in society call real-life struggles. Now the social justice warrior is taking action through her social media platforms to advocate for social injustices, gay rights, and Black Lives Matter causes.
Buzzfeed reported on Lovato’s opinion piece for Vogue where she shared that her long time away from Hollywood’s spotlight is when she began to question what was happening in the world. This shift started her self-education on society’s latest uprisings, specifically when Ahmaud Arbery’s death took the nation by storm.
Scroll hard through Black Lives Matter protests photos and you won’t find Lovato anywhere in sight. Apparently, her asthma condition classed her as “at-risk” for Covid-19 and prevented her from marching shoulder-to-shoulder with the protestors. That didn’t stop the self-proclaimed activist from educating her 92 million Instagram followers on the issue.
My relationship with social media before lockdown was very typical. If you scroll down my feed, it was mainly all glamour shots and pictures of me looking cute and fancy. But then there’s this sudden shift around the time Ahmaud Arbery was killed. Now my feed is filled with information about racial injustice and what we can do to help.
Initially, white guilt almost got the best of her. The insurmountable amount of violence against Black people hitting news outlets and social media made her insecure about herself.
Like a lot of people, I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that I hated that I shared the same skin color as the people accused of committing heinous crimes against Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many, many other Black lives.
Then there’s the age-old issue of the entertainment industry’s pillaging of Black culture for profit. Examining the amount of success and wealth accumulated throughout her life in the industry, Lovato came to terms with her white privilege and confessed to how much influence Black women have had on her throughout the years.
“What motivated me was knowing how much of myself comes from Black culture,” she explained. “I grew up listening to Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston and other soulful singers, but those two Black women in particular shaped me into the vocalist I am.”
She went on: “If you look at my life, everything that I have — money, success, a roof over my head — it’s because of the inspiration those Black women gave me. I continue to be constantly inspired by people of colour today.”
“So here I am, sitting in a home that I was able to afford with the money that I have from singing, while people of colour are fearing for their lives every day,” Demi finished. “I realised this was a lightning bolt jolting through my body, where I was reminded of my privilege.”
Lovato claims 2020 has been a year of growth and is focusing her advocacy on good allyship to disenfranchised movements including Me Too, gender equality, transgender issues, and immigration, to name a few. Admittedly, she understands that she lacks solutions, but she plans to “be a better person” and “leave the world in a better place” one cause at a time.
