Because 'casting' Tommy Lee Jones would be like casting Richard Dean Anderson as Sisko...then saying 'Sisko' is an African-American character.
The problem with that comparison is that a Latino may have any racial background. "Latino" refers to one's linguistic heritage, not to one's racial heritage. That's why a Chilean who is descended only from Spanish Europeans is just as legitimately Latino as someone who is
mestizo.
So far, Robert Beltran and Roxann Dawson are the only two major Latino performers (of color, non-white Hispanic) in the 45 years of the franchise; this mirrors Garrett Wang and George Takei, as the only two Asian males in the 45 years of the franchise...
I think it's completely fair to say that canonical
Star Trek has done an inadequate job of representing non-European and/or Latino characters. I also think it's important to note that
Star Trek has its heart in the right place even when its creators are blinded by their own ethnocentrism.
Regardless if it is 'real' casting or not, in regards to Reyes, it still gives an idea of who is in mind for the character.
No really. It's one author's utterly non-binding supplemental musings. The only thing you can legitimately use to critique the text is
the text.
And for my money, I don't see why Tommy Lee Jones playing a Latino is any more objectionable than an Englishman playing a Frenchman, or than a Chinese-American playing a Korean-American.
ETA:
Because 'casting' Tommy Lee Jones would be like casting Richard Dean Anderson as Sisko...then saying 'Sisko' is an African-American character.
But any such "casting" is done purely by the individual reader, and doesn't reflect the actual character, who only exists in prose. You can't take "casting" seriously when talking about characters who have no existence beyond words on a page. Like I said, some people imagine Edward James Olmos as Reyes. Some people probably imagine someone else altogether. None of us are under any obligation to agree with Dave's casting choices. (For instance, he imagines Billy Bob Thornton as Cervantes Quinn, but I don't like Thornton much so I imagine Quinn as Richard Dean Anderson.) Indeed, odds are that most readers of the novels have never read Dave's site or this BBS's casting thread and don't have any particular actor in mind for the role. So it doesn't make any sense for you to assume that Reyes somehow
has to be Tommy Lee Jones or share his ethnicity.
Trek has been known to cast 'white' individuals as Hispanics.
Why can't we 'cast' a brown-skinned actor? Or even a darker-brown-skinned actor?
No reason it can't, and in fact I for one tend to prefer to imagine Edward James Olmos as my model for the character of Diego Reyes.
The argument can be, especially as the demographics are skewed: the BBS is following Hollywood. Either subconsciously or consciously.
"The BBS" has no consensus on who ought to play Reyes, and it's unfair to claim that Jones is somehow the consensus choice. There
is no BBS consensus that you can cite in arguing that it's following Hollywood consciously or subconsciously; there's just a bunch of separate individuals with their own separate ideas.
Besides, you were the one who rejected including Worf because he was an alien rather than a black man. So you yourself set the precedent that it's the character's origins that matter, not the actor's origins.
Black males were primarily casted as Klingons; so, are you saying that black men are actually savage Klingons?
Wow there. Let's not be putting words in anyone's mouth.
Christopher's point is that in the example of Worf, you argued that in-universe origin of the character is what defines that character's heritage. Thus, in your argument, Worf does not constitute a black man, even though he is obviously played by a black man.
Christopher then goes on to argue that you are being inconsistent by saying that the idea of the obviously not-Latino Tommy Lee Jones playing Reyes would render the character somehow not legitimately Latino.
In other words,
Christopher is asking why Jones playing Reyes would make Reyes "white," but Michael Dorn's playing Worf doesn't make Worf black -- or, conversely, why Jones playing Reyes would make Reyes not-Latino, but Dorn's playing Worf does not make Worf not-Klingon.
If your argument is to be intellectually consistent, you must decide which is determinative of the character's racial/ethnic identity: The in-universe heritage of the character, or the out-universe fact of who plays that character.
(Of course, your entire argument falls apart when you bear in mind that
Tommy Lee Jones does not play Diego Reyes.)
Too, as already brought up before, Michael Dorn is the only black cast member to have a relationships with non-black character.
... LeVar Burton's LaForge having a relationship with Leah Brahms doesn't count?
Zoë Saldaña's Uhura having a relationship with the half-European Human Spock doesn't count?
Nichelle Nichols's Uhura having a relationship with Scotty in ST5 doesn't count?
Anthony Montgomery's Travis Mayweather having a relationship with Gannet Brooks doesn't count?
Frankly, depicting relationships for black characters is arguably a lose/lose situation. If you depict them as having inter-racial relationships, you run the risk of being accused of racism or ethnocentrism by somehow implying that the people blacks
really want relationships are white people. If you depict them as having relationships with other black characters, you run the risk of being accused of racism or ethnocentrism by somehow implying that the races should stay separate or that interracial relationships are wrong.
(Of course, he is in heavy make-up; and, as author David Greven would say in his book on page 111, the Klingons are 'ape-like' and 'dragon faced').
I don't think either phrase is a fair or accurate way to characterize the Klingons. In particular, I would point to Worf (played by an African-American actor) and Martok (played by a European-American actor) as prime examples of vivid, three-dimensional, and thoroughly respectable Klingon characters. And I'd also point to them as examples of the differences in skin tones that exist among Klingons, marking the idea that somehow "Klingon=black man" is false.
Would we have Michael Dorn romancing the white Terry Ferrell, Marina Sirtis, or Nicole deBoer if he was out of make-up like Jonathan Frakes or Patrick Stewart?
I think that's a hard question to answer, because so much of those relationships were built on Worf's personality, and Worf's personality was informed by his status as a Klingon amongst Federates.
If the Klingons were depicted as Human-looking aliens, or even as some sort of off-shoot civilization of Humans, with identical personalities? My inclination is to say that, yes, we would likely have seen Michael Dorn's Human-Worf romancing Troi, Jadzia, and Ezri. Worf's character was defined by his culture, not his appearance.
Black characters are usually regulated to primarily having relationships with only black characters, or having no relationships. This is a contrast to having pretty much every major Asian female character onscreen with a white male as a lover; and as we see in the literature, this objectification of Asian women continues. (On the 45 years of Trek, as aforementioned, we never saw any Asian couples; and there was a dearth of strong Asian male characters).
Again, this is damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't. I think it's completely fair to say that
Star Trek has done an inadequate job of portraying Asian characters and even Asian couples; I don't think it's fair to say that depicting Asian characters in relationships with non-Asians somehow equates to objectifying them. In particular, I'd point out that Hoshi does not seem objectified to me during her relationship scenes in ENT's Risa episode (though she, like everyone who stepped into the decon chamber, was certainly objectified in those scenes), and that Harry Kim was not being objectified during his numerous liaisons with non-Asians in the course of VOY.
