Source: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty
I guess that if you’re not exposed to a certain race or ethnic group, you might have a tendency to lump them all together. And then there are some instances when two people of a certain race really do favor.
This incident with Viola Davis and Danai Gurira is one of those.
According to The Root, during the Governors Awards, where Cicely Tyson was being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, photographers, including one from Getty Images, misidentified Danai Gurira as Viola Davis.
At first, I read this and scoffed. But the image Shadow And Act shared of these two women side by side did seem to highlight a resemblance I’d never noticed before. And while I won’t holler racism or go protesting in the street, there really is no excuse for this. I don’t know if photo agencies don’t make this same mistake with White actresses or if we just don’t report it as news. But when your job is about correctly identifying famous people, too many photo agencies have made pretty serious faux pas.
And when there are only a handful of Black working actresses in the industry, at any given time, they should be able to do better than that.
Still, there were some people—Black people— who were quick to point about the fact that the two women do favor.
Check out the outrage and the shoulder shrugs on the following pages.
