Changemaker of the Week: De Andre Roberts: Leader of the Second Civil Rights Movement

Many believe that to be an Changemaker, to do something innovative and courageous you need to create something outside yourself, an organization, a society, a cure for disease. Not De Andre Roberts.

Human rights encapsulates for many a sense of bravery, of demanding dignity, for others it is something unimaginable to the norms of everyday life, a far away phrase for lands of conflict, inequality, war. But 20 year old De Andre Roberts seems to think human rights isn’t such a big, frightening task, and it definitely isn’t beyond our reach. Named one of Youth Service America’s ‘Youth Changing the World’, De Andre Roberts is one of the million ripples that make up the tidal wave of demanding, developing and defending our human rights.

Writing a onetime blog for The Huffington Post titled ‘The Second Civil Rights Movement’ Roberts demands our attention, and unity in countering the prejudice and discrimination towards homosexually. Roberts definitely isn’t incorrect in his highlighting of the still ongoing struggle for equal treatment for heterosexuality and homosexuality. It is being repetitively debated by our society today, including in popular pop and hip-hop culture.

But Roberts’ real point isn’t demonstrating the various facts and figures of a dire issue we already know exists, his real emotion and passion are mobilized when speaking to us, the youth of today. Speaking of the past generations concentration of ‘white and black’, and our ability to concentrate on real human values rather than salaries and taxes, Roberts tells us our ability to see and imagine the future is our power. And that within that imagination, is the power to change the game forever.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis debate Equal Marriage and homosexuality in popular culture in ‘Same Love’