I’d like the chance to explain what Racebending.com is about. Why are we boycotting Paramount’s
The Last Airbender? Why are we angry about the production’s casting practices?
I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding here and my hope is that if you have the time to read my piece, you’ll find that we’re reasonable folks with valid concerns. We’re not just whistle-blowing PC police or crazy “reverse racists.”
Even if I don’t convince you to go out and buy a
Racebending shirt, I hope that by the end, you respect our position more, and can understand where we’re coming from even if you don’t agree.
If you’re pressed for time and the length of this piece annoys you, we have a five-minute video series explaining our position, though it won’t address everything in this piece:
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/the-last-airbender-film-how-to-talk-about-it-video-series/”>Why Are People Upset About Airbender?
WHY THIS ISSUE MATTERS
Sometimes it’s hard to see why something as trivial as a film matters. Why video games are important or how comic books can shape our lives.
In a given week, the average American child spends less than forty minutes in meaningful conversation with their parents. In the same week, he or she will also spend sixteen hundred and eighty minutes watching television.
In a given year, an American child will spend 900 hours in school – and 1500 hours watching television.
(source:
http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html by Norman Herr, PhD Professor of Science and Education)
Clearly, children spend a great deal of time consuming media. It helps shape how they view the world and themselves. In the states, we find it very easy to fight the gender stereotypes they may be exposed to. We tell our daughters that they can grow up to be doctors or lawyers or presidents, and that they are just as capable as any boy.
But in America, we’re very skittish about the subject of race. We like to stick to vague statements like “Everybody is equal” – a lofty and admirable statement, to be sure, but abstract and tough for a child to grasp.
When we don’t talk to our children about race, they draw their own conclusions, and one of their main sources of information about the world is media.
The kind of concepts children internalize about themselves is demonstrated in a study known as the doll test, initially conducted to help end segregation in the states, and performed again in more recent years:
http://www.racebending.com/v3/background/do-children-see-race/
AREN’T WE ALL EQUAL NOW?
About once a month, someone asks me some variant of this question: “Where are you from?”
“San Diego,” I’ll say.
“No,” comes the response. “Where are you REALLY from?”
There are more folks of Asian descent living in the United States than there are people in the entire country of Holland. My English is flawless (insofar as I’m a Californian with zealous overuse of the word “like”). Many of the folks who ask me this question I consider friends. And I’m not saying “Oh, look how racist everyone is.”
What I am saying is that Asian Americans aren’t really thought of as American. One of my close friends has a straight-up Brooklyn accent. He was telling a coworker that he used to serve in the army.
The response?
“Oh, cool. The Chinese army?”
It’s easy to draw comparisons between the
Airbender casting and an English actor playing an Irish one, or a Spanish actor playing an Italian actor. But it’s not really the same, and the reason is that Hollywood and media don’t consider whether an actor is Irish or Spanish or English. They think of that actor as “white.” The same is not true of actors who are Asian or Latino, who have to fight over the few roles specifically written for those ethnicities. And a lot of times, even when a role is steeped in Asian culture, even when a role is based on real-life individuals of Asian descent, those roles still go to white actors.
