The ‘Star Wars’ franchise is sticking up for actor Moses Ingram after she revealed she had received hundreds of racist messages and comments on social media.
The franchise tweeted that it was proud to welcome Ingram, who just made her debut as Reva in the Disney+ series, ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’.
“If anyone intends to make her feel in any way unwelcome, we have only one thing to say; we resist,” the ‘Star Wars’ account tweeted. “There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy, don’t choose to be a racist”.
Ingram posted multiple examples of racist messages and comments on Instagram, noting that she has received hundreds of messages, some of which included the ‘N-word’.
“There’s nothing anybody can do about this. There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate,” she said, in a video posted to her Instagram stories.
“The thing that bothers me is this feeling of like, I just got to shut up and take it, I just have to grin and bear it. And I’m not built like that. Thank you to the people who show up for me in the comments and in the places that I’m not going to put myself. And to the rest of you all are weird”.
Moses Ingram
Other Racist Attacks on ‘Star Wars’ Actors
This is not the first time an actor of ‘Star Wars’ have received racist comments and attacks from some social media users. Actors John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran were victims of racist attacks and were vocal about the hate they received after appearing in the ‘Star Wars’ movies.
Tran, the first woman of color to have a major role in a ‘Star Wars’ film, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about the harassment she received after starring in 2017’s ‘The Last Jedi’. The hate become so intense that Tran left social media and spent time in therapy.
“It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them,” Tran wrote. “Those words awakened something deep inside me, a feeling I thought I had grown out of.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, maybe if I was thinner’ or ‘Maybe if I grow out my hair’ and, worst of all, ‘Maybe if I wasn’t Asian,’ they would accept me. For months, I went down a spiral of self-hate, into the darkest recesses of my mind, places where I tore myself apart, where I put their words above my own self-worth”.
Tran
Even earlier, in 2014, Boyega’s appearance in the trailer for ‘The Force Awakens’ began a whole social media movement of #BlackStormtrooper, after many reacted to his casting with racist remarks.
Reacting to such remarks, Boyega said: “If you don’t like ‘Star Wars’ or the characters understand that there are decisions makers and harassing the actors/ actresses will do nothing. You’re not entitled to politeness when your approach is rude. Even if you paid for a ticket!”
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