Dinuc wrote: ↑Sat Dec 11, 2021 10:46 pm
Harry Potter, how are they stereotypes? Do you point at other minor characters that are white and call them stereotypes too?
What makes a character a stereotype isn't that they're minor character. It's when baseless generalizations, rooted in ignorance and often bigotry, are used to define a character's existence in the plot. It's when you have characters with names like Luna Lovegood and Nymphadora Tonks and all manners of inventive and interesting names in the wizarding world and then you write the one Asian character in the entire series and name her "Cho Chang" - literally just two Korean surnames shoved together in the most pathetic attempt at introducing diversity. I mean, ffs, there's so little diversity in HP she would have been better off not including the ~5 black and brown characters she wrote it so in the least as to not do people like me the disservice of being represented by such a shitty authorship.
That post is just making up drama. Is the latest episode racist because they are traveling to the dark one's prison? Should the show have called him the Light one, and called the Aes Sedai tower the Dark Tower. Would that be appropriately 'woke'?
Just because you may not be affected by racism or sexism or bigotry in any meaningful or tangible way doesn't mean it's "drama" when those of us who are affected by it daily do bring it up and call it out. And you clearly do not understand racism for you to be making obtuse statements like this. No it's not
racist to have the evil god called the "Dark One". There's a difference between calling an immortal source of evil "Dark One" and inventing an entire race of people, saying they're all evil, and also all of them are black or 'dark skinned'. There's a huge difference between calling a building 'The White Tower' and painting all the white people in the story as exceptionally good and heroic. The 'White/Light/Good vs Black/Dark/Evil' dichotomy isn't inherently racist. It's a common motif that exists in many cultures. But when a white author from a predominantly white country chooses to depict -white people- as good and -black people- as evil, that
is racist.
Characterisation and different looks also helps the audience. In Shadow and Bone they have different nations and ethnicities. And that helps the audience know who is who. There is no racism and people who get offended are choosing to be offended. It is why the Aiel have red hair and why people know Rand is different. It is a narrative device to help tell the story and has nothing to do with trying to stigmatize a persons appearance.
It is no accident when a white author pens a story where all the good people are white and all the evil people are black or dark skinned or otherwise coded as being non-white like Tolkein did, as Isabel pointed out.
Also, just because a show may not depict acts of racism, doesn't mean that it can't be racist. We do not live in a vacuum. Our works of art are
not divorced from the real world politics and ideologies that envelop them, no matter how much someone may try to pretend it's so. There is always a dialogue that is happening between those who make the art and those who view the art and we don't engage with a blank slate. And when an author, intentionally or not, injects their prejudices and biases into their work and people read that without a critical eye, they risk being infected with those same prejudices.
And if black people are taking offense to the way in which black people are being depicted, people who aren't black don't get to turn to us and say "You're choosing to be offended." It's honestly a pathetic and patronizing argument to look at a people who are saying they're hurt by a thing, that they take legitimate offense to something, and tell them they're simply "choosing" to be hurt or offended. Because I'll tell you what: I don't
ever choose to be offended. You may lack the fundamental level of understanding or empathy to be able to grasp why we're offended, but that is a failing on your part and not on those of us who take offense.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/two ... a-n1240438
And are you really going to sit here and tell the ~80% of black respondents who feel the media negatively portrays us that we're all just 'looking to take offense'. How many people is it going to take for you to believe them when they say that a thing hurts them or is offensive to them? Do you even have a concept of what it would take for you to believe someone when they say they're hurt or is it only your feelings which determine whether someone could or should even be upset?
If you watched some US and UK TV you would be very surprised if you looked up the actual ethnic breakdowns of those countries.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/ ... e-and-male
US Women make up ~50% of the population, in the US minorities make up ~30%. There is not proportional representation in front of the camera. And behind the camera? The people who write the shows and determines what gets viewed and what makes it on air? That is still overwhelmingly white and male and is equally, if not more so, as big of an issue as the lack of diversity in front of the camera. We may have come a long way from where we were ten years ago or twenty years ago, but we're still not there yet and its pathetic the way people kick and scream because diversity and equality means they lose out on the unfair advantages and over-representation they've enjoyed for so long.
Representation and positive discrimination is different. And I wonder if a lot of people praising diversity in these shows even understands the difference.
White people, white men in particular, have been over-represented at every level and in every sphere of US/European societies for
centuries. You're panicking at the possibility that in 2022 non-white people might, for once, be slightly over-represented in the media (which says nothing of all the other places where we still remain grossly under-represented) as if that even begins to make up for the white supremacy, racism, sexism, et al which has ensured that minorities were under-represented all this time. If the next ten years of US media only hired black people for every role it still wouldn't make up for the past 100 years in which white people were purposefully, and with malice, over-represented. Representation is important, but you cannot pretend that after hundreds of years of inequality that simply flipping the switches so things are now "equal" that that makes up or addresses decade after decade of harm. That's not how dung works.