Nobody's saying more representation is a bad thing, well ok some are but I'm not, I'm saying representation at the expense of another is a bad way to approach it and that goes for any way; female to male, male to female white to color, color to white, color 1 to color 2. You can't cherry pick when you want your morals to apply, it's either wrong to steal characters or it isn't.
I'm afraid this isn't how morals work. What you are trying to do is simplify morals into boxes of black and white, when the entire concept of morality in the bigger picture includes patches of grey. Taking a life, stealing, hitting someone, changing characteristics of a character(race, gender, sexuality), none of them are cut and dry. All have gray areas that cannot be ignored.
You say that it's not right to increase representation at the expense of others. The thing is, this isn't an expense to white people, or at least, any existing expense to them is 100% negligible. If they were to print a black Batman comic tomorrow, is that really an expense to white people? You really would sit here and tell me that that one comic would put a dent into 77 years of comics featuring white Batman that we would have to go "Eh, maybe we shouldn't?" Your view is very narrow and you're refusing to look at the bigger picture for the sake of simplicity in a topic that is anything but simple.
This video by the Nostalgia Critic shows the complexity of the topic and quite frankly, if you can't approach the topic with regards to its level of complexity and you just try to reduce it to two boxes of universally right or universally wrong, I don't think you have a place in the conversation.
[video=youtube;1WUdQpuVRtw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WUdQpuVRtw[/video]
Just because it grants more representation in the end doesn't mean the way path there was the best one.
Of course not. Which is why we also look at "How much does the side now not being represented have to lose?" And the answer is, white people have nothing to lose. Zip. Zero, from a couple black James Bonds or black Hermoines or black Batmans. And that is why it is fine, because even if there is expense, it's not significant, accountable, or relevant. It simply does not matter because whites have generations upon generations upon generations of legitimate representation to fall back on. Minorities simply do not have that same luxury.
If it were truly solely about boosting representation people wouldn't be so adamant about taking established characters for themselves.
This doesn't make sense. Having one black James Bond run in the near future wouldn't be "taking James Bond for themselves" because they have 10 other white James Bonds in films over the span of 26 movies and half a century. If you think one film run of a few movies will take away half a century's worth of movies and make James Bond "just for blacks," then you have to go.
Same thing goes for one play featuring a black Hermoine. Or a black Batman. Not to mention the countless other white characters that have accompanied these single characters. There are 772 Harry Potter characters, you know how many are black? Five. Out of 772 characters, five of them were explicitly stated or implied to be black while the rest are assumed white. That's 0.6% of the population of Harry Potter as presented to us being black, while the actual number is 3%. I just googled the cast of the Harry Potter movies and the sidebar list had 53 people(there are definitely more.) Out of this list, 3 were minorities with 2 blacks and 1 Asian. And making one more black will be "taking it for themselves?" You're 100% mental if you actually try to say that again.
The character isn't Asian, he is White. What are you talking about?
When I googled the character, it said he was born in an Asian country.
Also you're talking about representation on a global scale but not considering where the films you're mentioning come from. Hollywood is US so it's going to be reflective of US before it's reflective of the world.
It still doesn't justify the overwhelming gap between white and black representation.
I don't see anyone calling out Chinese studios for using all Asian casts, no cry for representation in that market. No one's saying they have less representation the issue is the favored methods of gaining that representation are the exact issues complained about when done from the other side.
Once again because whites have nothing to lose. China and most Asian countries aren't a kettlepot of cultures like America is. They simply aren't as diverse, so it's more fitting for them to have all-Asian casts, while American media have far less representation than what is actually reflected by the population.
You said it was historically oppressive and progressive. So you were basing your feelings and judging the intent of current race changes on historical injustices. The mentality you presented towards the issue is they did it first so it's ok that we do it now.
Wrong. It's not about "Whites have done it to us, so let's do it to them." It's about the fact that in the establishment of white supremacist oppression in the United States, the media was one weapon used. Methods of representation for a long time in the United States was used to create a gap between representation of whites and minorities in the media, which was used to perpetuate the rhetoric of white supremacy. In simple terms, propaganda.
Making a white character black now isn't done because "let's see how you like it," it's done to rectify that gap and to rectify that method of representation. Current race changes are done as a response to historical injustices because those historical injustices still continue to have effects in current times, as evident by the fact that there is still an overwhelmingly inexcusable gap in representation.
I then compared that mentality to the mentality of old racists who didn't want black, latino, Asian etc. people wearing the same clothes they did because they felt like those people were trying to assimilate into their culture, which is similar to how some people react to white people in styles they deem part of black culture, like the lady who attacked a guy for having dreadlocks.
Irrelevant to what I'm saying.
