Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall And Leigh-Anne Pinnock Shortlisted For Ethnicity Award After BLM Support

2 October 2020, 15:19

Leigh-Anne and Jade Thirlwall are up for an Ethnicity Award. Picture: Getty

Little Mix stars Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock have been nominated for an ethnicity award after their vocal support for Black Lives Matter.

Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock used their platforms as part of Little Mix to actively support the Black Lives Matter movement and their activism has landed them each a nomination for an Ethnicity Award.

The singers attended the protests in London after George Floyd’s death and shared their experiences of racism in the weeks that followed, in a bid to spread the awareness of social injustice and racial inequalities that are still very much present in society today.

Perrie Edwards Hits Back At 'Ungrateful' Claims After Venting About Having A Bad Day

The Ethnicity Awards celebrate figures in the public eye and organisations who commit to improving the lives of ethnic minorities.

Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne Pinnock reveals she felt ‘invisible and overlooked’

Little Mix are currently hosting The Search. Picture: Getty

Both Jade and Leigh-Anne have opened up about their experiences of racism in recent months, encouraging such important discussions to become ‘the norm’.

Leigh-Anne is even working on a documentary titled Colourism and Race to “bring such discussions to a wider audience.”

The singer opened up about her earliest experience of racism in Channel 4 documentary The Talk in August, revealing she first encountered racism aged nine.

Alongside her parents John and Deborah, she recalled: "I had a little incident in primary school, a boy wrote on a bit of paper, ‘Name: Leigh-Anne, age: nine, nationality: Jungle.’

Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock have been vocal about their experiences of racism. Picture: Getty

"I saw it and my heart just dropped, I knew it was racism, I was nine years old, and I was just distraught by it."

She also revealed feeling she had to work ’10 times harder’ as the black girl in Little Mix and worried she was the ‘least favourite’ of the group.

Jade has also spoken out about her experiences, saying on the No Country for Young Women podcast she felt “ashamed” of her background while at school.

“I think because I was bullied quite badly in school because of the colour of my skin and for being Arab I wasn’t very proud of who I was,” she recalled.

The girls are nominated for an Ethnicity Award alongside the likes of Jorja Smith, Lewis Hamilton and Jameela Jamil.

> Roman Kemp's Catching Up With All Of The Stars Over On Our App