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Things not mattering
2009-08-17 22:17This whitewashing thing, taking stories written by, featuring or about people of colour and twisting them, recasting so at minimum the heroes are replaced with white people and at maximum... well.
It is a pretty pervasive and appalling practice -- the link above is by no means exhaustive.
There are a couple of reasons commonly given to justify these practices. One is to claim it is not the fault of the company producing the work, they are merely doing what sells. Perhaps, but to say "We do this because racism is profitable" is far from what I would consider a laudable business practice, and it doesn't much help the argument that proper capitalism* would eschew oppression because it is economically disadvantageous, either.
Another is to say race doesn't matter, at least to them. Perhaps so, but if it really is the case then why is there a trend to recasting people of colour as white and not so much the other direction? Why change the settings of stories to be white and Anglo if this doesn't matter? And if it matters so little to the people making these things, then why not cater to the people for whom it does matter by leaving the stories, characters, settings, etc. intact? Really, if people don't care about race, then why keep replacing people of colour with white people?
It is a pretty pervasive and appalling practice -- the link above is by no means exhaustive.
There are a couple of reasons commonly given to justify these practices. One is to claim it is not the fault of the company producing the work, they are merely doing what sells. Perhaps, but to say "We do this because racism is profitable" is far from what I would consider a laudable business practice, and it doesn't much help the argument that proper capitalism* would eschew oppression because it is economically disadvantageous, either.
Another is to say race doesn't matter, at least to them. Perhaps so, but if it really is the case then why is there a trend to recasting people of colour as white and not so much the other direction? Why change the settings of stories to be white and Anglo if this doesn't matter? And if it matters so little to the people making these things, then why not cater to the people for whom it does matter by leaving the stories, characters, settings, etc. intact? Really, if people don't care about race, then why keep replacing people of colour with white people?
