Yara Shahidi has been a well-recognized face in the entertainment industry since she was a baby. The Minnesota-born actress has worked along-side the likes of Eddie Murphy, Kerry Washington, and now most recently, the cast of Black-ish. Yet, when she should be basking in the glow and excitement of her show being nominated for an Emmy Award, the teenager’s glee is overshadowed by the constant distressing news of violence around the world.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she says of recent events in an interview with Interview Magazine. “I’m apprehensive to open up Twitter and see what the next hashtag is.”
Shahidi, whose mother is African-American and her father is Iranian-American, is particularly interested in what’s going on in the world around her because so much of it hits very close to home for she and her family. “You don’t see them and think half black, half Iranian—they get a safe pass,” she comments regarding her two brothers, 8 and 13. “We are black Shahidis.”
