Idris Elba is willing to listen and learn.
That’s the lesson he seemed to share with his Instagram followers after he deleted a Juneteenth celebration post that featured him wearing a controversial T-shirt.
The shirt in question drew immediate backlash from the black community. It read: “Take my art, culture, fashion, life (struck out with a single line), music, science.”
Many followers took issue with the message of the T-shirt, particularly as the theft and appropriation of black culture has been a long-standing issue.
British actor Elba took notice and wasted no time deleting the image, which he had captioned: “Celebrate Juneteenth. Never say Die.”
Juneteenth is an American holiday on June 19 which marks the end of slavery in the United States. This year, there have been calls for more widespread recognition of Juneteenth as an official holiday.
In place of his deleted Instagram post, Elba posted a new black T-shirt on his feed that read, simply: “Deleted.”
“When your own people weren’t with it,” he captioned the image, alongside a black heart emoji.
Fellow British actor John Boyega, who has been outspoken during the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, showed appreciation of Elba’s new post with a muscle flex emoji.
