Over the week I’ve been hearing that voice actors, across the Hollywood space have been quitting or leaving roles they “feel” should go to Black voice actors. This is not only incredible tone-deaf, but quite frankly insulting!
From Jenny Slate to Kristen Bell, these actors “felt” that they should step down from the Black roles they played, thinking that these roles should belong to Black voice actors. Basically, anyone with any sort of common sense, who is a voice actor of any race should be insulted by this act. They are essentially saying that they only way a Black actor can be successful, is if the white actors lower themselves or remove themselves from the space! How tone deaf do you have to be to see this as anything but insulting and pandering! If these actors were really for the cause, and actually listened, they would have realized that no self-respecting Black voice actor wants this! What they want is to play ANY role, if they’ve got the skills for it.
So if the perfect voice for a black character just so happens to be a white voice actor, then so be it. And vice versa if the perfect voice for a white character is a Black voice actor! No fan of any product, sorry, no TRUE fan of any IP would give a damm about who plays what character so long as the voice brings the character to life! This is virtue signaling to a capital V! So what now? Do these white actors not realize what they’ve done? If any Black actor gets these “open roles”, who in the industry and outside of it will take them seriously. How do we know that they got that role for their merits, and not just cause “Black support”.
All I saw from what these white actors were doing this:
"Hear me weak one, I shall ALLOW you Blacks to have these roles, for I am a kind and noble spirit, a righteous soul who understand that without my absent from these roles, you are likely never to succeed. You're welcome!"
Make no mistake, NO SELF-RESPECTING BLACK VOICE ACTOR ASKED THEM FOR THIS! Lack of communication and lack of common sense allowed for this. If there was communication, then they’d realized that Black actors have been complaining for years that they feel like they only get roles that want their Black voices, but not their talent! You are literally slapping them in the face with your so-called “gesture of support”!
And if by the off chance you do see someone cheering this on, or saying this is the right thing to do, we call these people losers!
