Tammy Hembrow attends Black Lives Matter protest in Brisbane

Tammy Hembrow has pledged her support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

The 26-year-old Australian influencer shared a photo to Instagram of herself at a protest in Brisbane on Saturday, alongside the caption ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’.

Tammy previously alerted fans to the event details – a demonstration in solidarity with the U.S. protests while also calling for justice for Aboriginal deaths in custody.

In the photo shared on Saturday, the fitness mogul dressed casually and held up a cardboard sign with the text ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’.

Just a day prior, Tammy slammed ‘ignorant people’ in another Instagram post. 

The mother-of-two shared a behind-the-scenes picture from a photo shoot on Thursday where she was seen rolling her eyes. 

‘When you realise just how many ignorant people there really are out there,’ she wrote in the post’s caption.   

On Monday night, Tammy addressed the #BlackLivesMatter protests which have erupted in the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd.

The entrepreneur shared a post with her 11 million Instagram followers declaring her solidarity with anti-police brutality demonstrators.

She also acknowledged her ‘privileged’ position as a light-skinned woman, prompting one of her fans to point out that she’d previously identified as mixed race.

Tammy’s post read in part: ‘I know that I am privileged because of the colour of my skin and will never truly understand the injustices that have been going on since forever and that are still happening today.

‘I have many friends that are POC [people of colour] as well as family members and I am doing them a disservice by staying quiet on my platform with everything that is going on. I need you to know that I hear you and I stand with you.’

One of her followers replied, ‘But I thought you were a person of colour.’ In response to this, Tammy clarified her ethnic background.

‘I am mixed,’ she wrote. ‘But when you look at me and don’t know me, you don’t see that by the colour of my skin.’

A discussion about Tammy’s racial heritage began in the comments section, as several fans noted that they ‘didn’t know she was mixed’ until she mentioned it.

Others said the businesswoman should be considered a person of colour because her mother, Nathalie Stanley, is Trinidadian. 

‘You [are] still black, regardless of your complexion. Even your children have black features,’ one follower wrote.

Another commented: ‘Your mother is Trini, honey, you’re black. You’re a person of colour. Doesn’t matter if you’re mixed.’

Meanwhile, several fans agreed Tammy had made the right decision by acknowledging her privilege as a light-skinned person despite having some black heritage.

Tammy’s father, Mark Hembrow, is a white Australian. Her mother, Nathalie Stanley, is of mixed heritage from Trinidad and Tobago.

Tammy explained her ethnic background in a YouTube video from 2018 entitled ‘Meet my mum’.

‘I told everyone how you’re from Trinidad and Tobago, and everyone is like, “Why isn’t she black?”‘ she said, addressing her mother.

‘I am black,’ replied Nathalie.

When her daughter asked, ‘But why aren’t you [black] actually?’, Nathalie responded matter-of-factly: ‘It’s called mixed race.’

Turning the camera to herself, Tammy said: ‘Yeah, so my mum is actually from Trinidad and Tobago. My grandma is black.’