WASHINGTON — Julia Camara is a student activist who uses spoken word as one tool to deliver her message and advocate for social issues.
“Our skin has always been laminated with a price tag. Since there is no highest bidder now, no auction block to sell us off of, no deal to break with the master next door -- it's easier just to kill us while they steal our culture,” she expressed during a protest in D.C.
Camara, 18, is a recent graduate of Georgetown Day School and incoming freshman at Northwestern University.
“I'm half white and half West African,” Camara shared. “I've gone to private school my whole life, but I lived in Africa for most of my life. So, I've kind of seen both worlds. I've seen the colorism that you have in Africa. And then I've come to America and I started to understand why.”
Camara recalled having family members in Africa bleach their skin to have a lighter appearance. She told WUSA9 her family in America have always said her skin was better or her hair was the ‘good hair.’
“Since I started to understand and why I start to ask more questions,” she said. 'Why is it that it is this way?'”
While Camara is passionate about a long list of social issues, she is most passionate about economics, mass incarceration, police reform and education.
“I think that America is so deep deeply rooted in anti-blackness that it needs to be in education. Education needs to be just as deeply rooted in anti-racism,” she explained.
Camara is most inspired by the unity and focus of the civil rights movement of the past. While she believes space should be made for young leaders and new ideas, Camara hopes the current movement for equality is able to adapt some of the practices of past leaders.
“I think that it's really important that it's young white people just as much as it is young black people because we're the future. It's really cliche but it's true,” she said.
Camara will be working toward a criminal justice degree in college and dreams of becoming a supreme court justice one day.
