Adele took to Instagram to celebrate what would've been the Notting Hill Carnival, a cultural festival honoring Caribbean and Black heritage, and stirred controversy with her attire.
The singer was dressed in a Jamaican flag print bikini top and tie-dyed leggings with her hair styled in Bantu knots in the photo, which she captioned, "Happy what would be Notting Hill Carnival my beloved London." While some thought that Adele was showing appreciation for the culture, others argued that she was appropriating.
One person commented on the post, explaining, "Black women are discriminated against for wearing cultural hairstyles like bantu knots and locs but white people are not, that’s not fair and that’s why people are pissed off."
Journalist Ernest Owens also reacted, tweeting, "If 2020 couldn’t get anymore bizarre, Adele is giving us Bantu knots and cultural appropriation that nobody asked for. This officially marks all of the top white women in pop as problematic."
Adele has yet to respond to the controversy.
