Asian actors were misidentified by Vogue and People.com at the Screen Actors Guild Awards recently.
Comedian Ronny Chieng pointed out People.com for the error on his Instagram story and Twitter account.
Chieng posted a photo from People where he was credited as “Randall Park” and another actor from the Crazy Rich Asians movie, Tan Kheng Hua, was labelled as “Jae. W. Suh.” Michelle Yeoh, who is not present in the photo, was named in the picture’s caption.
In Vogue, a photo of Crazy Rich Asians’ Gemma Chan at the SAG awards was labelled as “Liv Lo.” In the same gallery from Vogue, a red carpet snap of Tan at the SAG awards was incorrectly labelled as “Michelle Yeoh.”
This isn’t the first time Vogue has been criticized for misidentifying a person of colour.
Only a few weeks ago, journalist Noor Tagouri was captioned as “actor, director and model Noor Bukhari” in print.
“I never, EVER expected this from a publication I respect SO much and have read since I was a child,” Tagouri wrote in an Instagram post on Jan. 17 where she posted a video of her seeing the print version for the first time. “Misrepresentation and misidentification is a constant problem if you are Muslim in America.
The video starts off with Tagouri laughing in excitement, however, she quickly realized Vogue made a blunder by misidentifying her name as well as her profession.
Vogue apologized, saying they were “sincerely sorry for the mistake.”
“We also understand that there is a larger issue of misidentification in media — especially among nonwhite subjects,” Vogue adds. “We will try to be more thoughtful and careful in our work going forward, and we apologize for any embarrassment this has caused Tagouri and Bukhari.”
The mislabelling of people of colour by media companies has sparked an outrage online, prompting prominent influencers like Tina Craig of BagSnob, a Taiwanese-American, to speak up about diversity.