Leigh-Anne Pinnock, a member of girl group Little Mix, is speaking out against the racism she has experienced in the music industry and throughout her life. Pinnock, 28, who is of Barbadian and Jamaican descent, revealed in the recent Channel 4 documentary The Talk that she has experienced racism since she was in primary school, aged just nine when a classmate told her she was ‘from the jungle’. On the incident, the singer said ‘I was just distraught by it… my heart just dropped. I knew it was racism’. This, she notes, was only the first of many examples of racism she has experienced.
Pinnock, second from the left, is the only Black member of Little Mix
The star has been opening up about her struggles with discrimination and prejudice amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and suggested that her experience in Little Mix has been different to those of her bandmates because of the colour of her skin. The singer admits that, as the only Black member of the band, she sometimes feels ‘invisible’ in her own group, and senses that she is the least preferred among Little Mix fans, confessing that she feels this especially strongly when touring predominantly white countries.
Despite her early experiences of racism, Pinnock says she was taken aback by the extent of this disparity, telling Channel 4 ‘I just wish that I knew more… that I was more educated on this and I knew that, yeah, your race will hold you back a bit. I just wish I knew so I could prepare myself’. Pinnock recalls that in 2011, after Little Mix’s X Factor win, choreographer Frank Gatson told her ‘You are the Black girl, you have to work ten times harder’. At first confused by his words, the singer says that this advice from Gatson, who is also Black, ‘made sense’ later in her career. Pinnock indeed feels greater pressure to work harder to satisfy fans and impress critics, observing that ‘Talent alone isn’t enough’ for Black artists to be successful, and that ‘Our reality is no matter how far you think you’ve come, racism exists’.
The Little Mix star is not the only Black musician calling out racism in the industry. Fellow X Factor winner Alexandra Burke also recalls having to put in additional effort to please white audiences, revealing that she was even asked to bleach her skin to appear ‘whiter’, and told not to style her hair in braids or an afro, because ‘You have to have hair… that appeals to white people’. Another Black X Factor contestant, Misha B, also recently expressed her feelings of being ‘devalued’ by the music industry, and said X Factor producers created an unfair ‘angry Black girl narrative’ during her time on the show.
As previously reported, Pinnock will be fronting a TV documentary about racism and colourism in the UK. Leigh-Anne: Colourism & Race will be broadcast on BBC Three, where last year Pinnock’s bandmate Jesy Nelson spoke out against cyberbullying, but no air date has yet been confirmed.
