Last week saw country band Lady Antebellum change their name because of the slavery connotations related to the word 'antebellum'.
It refers to the period in the American south where a brutal regime of slavery was imposed upon black people, but the band said that in their case, it had referred to the style of house where they had their first-ever photoshoot.
They said that they will herefore be known as 'Lady A' - but there's one major problem: there's already a musician who goes by that name, and she's a black blues singer.
People have suggested that the fact that the trio did not bother checking is itself the very definition of white privilege.
The 61-year-old, whose real name is Anita White, told Rolling Stone: "I’m not about to stop using my name. For them to not even reach out is pure privilege. I’m not going to lay down and let this happen to me. But now the burden of proof is on me to prove that my name is in fact mine, and I don’t even know how much I’ll have to spend to keep it.”
Lady A has been using the name since the 1980s and was critical of the band's lack of research, pointing out that her music is easily searchable on platforms like Spotify - or at least she was, until last week.
“Lady A is my brand, I’ve used it for over 20 years, and I’m proud of what I’ve done," she said. "This is too much right now. They’re using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn’t have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it.”
So far, the country band have not responded.
