From her album Familia to her actual family in Cuba, Camila Cabello has had one busy summer that hasn’t been without controversy. Most recently, Cabello hit your social media feeds following her latest appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last month (July 23). There, she performed her first single on the new album, a track titled “Don’t Go Yet.”
Fans took to social media almost immediately to criticize the performance. At the heart of this issue was one of her dancers who appeared to be wearing black face. Cabello responded with the following explanation:
“Hey! so this dude was just supposed to be a white man with a terrible spray tan,” she wrote in a post on Twitter. “We purposefully tried to pull together a multicultural group of performers, the expectation was not that everyone in the performance needed to be Latin.” She went on to write,”The point was to try to make each person look like an over the top 80’s (sic) character,” adding that there were “white people, African American people, latin people, etc.,” represented in the video, including “a white dude with a terrible orange spray tan.”
Some fans were still not pleased and felt that her response felt short. One user responded with, “Instead of trying to find an excuse for that man, you should at least apologize to the community you have offended. disappointed smh”
Other users further urged the singer to apologize. “That’s not the way Camila, blackface is racism and a total disrespect to all your black fans (sic) i love you but I’m very disappointed because an apology was a minimum that we could get,” she wrote.
The singer has yet to issue an apology or further respond to the criticism. Just days before the controversial performance, Cabello was spreading awareness and creating other headlines about her home country of Cuba. The singer took to her TikTok and talked about why she supports the ongoing protests in Cuba.
She says in a TikTok video, “As you guys know, I’m Cuban-Mexican, well, I don’t know if you know that, but, I’m Cuban Mexican. My mom is Cuban, I lived and was born in Cuba and so this movement is really important to me as I still have family on the island and I hear my cousins and my mom talk about what’s going on on the island.” She continued with, “For 62 years there has been no freedom of speech. Anybody who speaks out against the government in Cuba is disappeared and kidnapped from their families or put behind bars.” She ended her post by encouraging all of her fans to share the video to help spread awareness.
That’s not all that’s on her plate this summer as Cabello is also promoting her movie Cinderella. This twist on the classic tale tells the story of a young woman who chooses her dreams over everything. She is joined by the iconic Billy Porter and Idina Menzel. The movie is scheduled to be released on Amazon Prime on September 3, 2021.
There’s just a few short weeks left of summer — and we can’t help but wonder if there’s more to come for Cabello.
