I don’t blame stars for whitewashing their names to get on – lots of minorities do it in the jobs market. But there is a moral case against thisIt’s hard to become a superhero when you enjoy a super-ethnic name. Just examine Chloe Bennet,who stars in the TV series Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. Bennet, who was born Chloe Wang, and recently made headlines for defending her decision to anglicise her name. The actor made it clear it wasn’t a lack of pride in her Asian heritage,but rather industry prejudice that prompted her to trade Wang for Bennet. “Hollywood is racist and wouldn’t cast me with a final name that made them uncomfortable,” Bennet announced on Instagram this week. “Changing my final name doesn’t change the fact that my BLOOD is half-Chinese, or ” she wrote. It means I had to pay my rent.Bennet isn’t the first celebrity to enjoy whitened their name in the pursuit of fame; there is a long history of entertainers adopting anglicised public personas. Sir Ben Kingsley,for example, was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji. “As soon as I changed my name, and I got the jobs,” he said in a Radio Times interview. Related: White actors must stand up to whitewashing. Ed Skrein shows how | Vera Chok Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com