Leona Lewis has joined the force of voices from the music industry in tackling the rise in racism, following the tragic incident of George Floyd. The singer has recorded herself recalling an experience with a racist shop owner in London who treated her and her father unfairly.
“Hi, everyone. I just wanted to share something because with all the heaviness that’s going on right now, especially in America, I’ve heard a lot of people in the UK saying, ‘Oh year, it’s really bad in America. It’s not like that in the UK’,“ the singer started off the clip with an acknowledgment of the current controversy surrounding racism in the UK..
She recounted to the day she and her father went shopping a high street in Chelsea, London, and entered this particular shop on the street. Noticing that they were the only black people in the shop, the “Bleeding Love” hitmaker suddenly saw the lady store owner with a disapproving glance towards them. Approaching Lewis and her father, the owner said, “You need to put that stuff down. You’re not allowed to touch it.”
After that, the situation escalated into an argument in which the owner threatened to call the police on the two. Finally, they decided to leave the store, with the singer feeling “so enraged“.
The shocking bit from the story is when the star left furious and devastated by the situation, her dad came to confront the owner once again with Lewis’s music CD. “He went back into the store, and he came out like five minutes later, and there was a knock on the window.”
The lady came to apologise for not recognising who Lewis was: “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know who you were.” The singer responded to the owner and said, “You’re racist. You’re a racist,” and unsurprisingly, the owner denied and claimed that she “got scared” and was afraid they might steal something.
In the last part of the video, the 35-year-old pleaded people to “say something” and stand with victims of racism. “You need to stand with us, and you need to acknowledge that it’s happening because when you don’t, you’re diminishing the pain and our humanity,” said the star.
Leona Lewis rose to fame after winning the third series of The X Factor in 2006, and went to build her stardom with global hit “Bleeding Love” from her debut ‘Spirit‘. Her last album was 2015’s ‘I Am‘, and she has not released any new music ever since. In 2019, however, the star revealed that she was back in the studio to make new music again.
The “One More Sleep” singer was born to a Welsh mother and a father of Guyanese descent, which she called “a beautiful representation of what that unity” meant for her.
