After celebrating her 32nd birthday in Mexico earlier this week, Rihanna focused back on her career this weekend. She showed up to the NAACP awards tonight to accept the President’s Award for her work on behalf of the Clara Lionel Foundation, an organization that funds education and emergency preparedness around the world, that she founded back in 2012.
In her speech accepting the award, Rihanna noted that when it comes to issues of discrimination based on race, it’s up to all people to stand together in support — not just people of color or Black people. “We can only fix this world together, we can’t do it divided,” Rihanna said. “If it’s your problem, then it’s not mine: ‘it’s a woman’s problem, it’s a Black people problem, it’s a poor people problem.’ I mean, how many of us in this room have colleagues and partners and friends from other races, sexes, religions, show of hands? Well, they want to break bread with you, right? They like you? Well, then this is their problem, too.”
She went on to name check Michael Brown Jr. and Atatiana Jefferson, two young Black Americans who were wrongfully shot by the police, and urged friends of all backgrounds to get involved in speaking up about subjects like targeted police violence against people of color. “When we’re marching, and protesting, and posting about the Michael Brown Jr.s and the Atatiana Jeffersons of the world, tell your friends to pull up,” she said to much applause.
Watch her full speech above.
