A good couple of years back my sister showed me a song from the musical Avenue Q, entitled "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist", and the lyrics go:
"Everyone's a little bit racist
Sometimes.
Doesn't mean we go
Around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find
No one's really color blind.
Maybe it's a fact
We all should face
Everyone makes judgments
Based on race."
It is a catchy song, and well, it is, 100%, true. Many of us wish to believe that we are color blind, but we are not. Not to mention, that racism can be based on religion, sexual preferences and not just skin color. We just have a bunch of different names for it, but it all comes down to disgusting discrimination. And I am the first to admit that I have reservations based on stereotypes that have formulated in the country that I live in. I am white, yes, I am treated differently in the world, yes, I have been fortunate in many cases that have, one hundred percent derived from privilege. I know that. But as a woman I am also scared, almost all the time and always. That is something that we are taught at a very young age. Some of my decisions in crossing the road and avoiding certain kind of people is not always racially motivated, come to think of it, it very rarely is, I am just scared often. That said, I am no stranger to the reason stereotypes exist.
I am writing all of this down is because I do not believe that I am allowed to pass judgement on others if I do not own up to my own biases and my own lack of being color blind. But as a European born citizen, I cannot fathom to understand the hardships that the people of color had to endure. Or those whose families have been persecuted for one reason or another. Anywhere in the world. The only thing I can do is not make it harder for them. I can educate myself, I can speak out when I see others abusing their privilege, and I can learn to judge less based on stereotype and to see the person behind these false images.
Why are we talking about this now?
You might have seen that they dared to cast a person of color in the new Amazon show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. There have been controversial casting decisions before in Hollywood, every once in a while this useless debate keeps coming up, and I am tired of it... If you don't like a person of color being cast just don't watch the thing, why do you have to go and ruin it for others?
Allow me to share just one small but useful advice, that might come in handy later on: THINK before you SPEAK.
When people rallied against Star Wars Episode VIII The Last Jedi (2017), I just lost my shit... there was nothing wrong with the casting or the chemistry on screen, and people could not stop it from making it a racial issues, just because the movie's bold story was "against" their nostalgic love of the first trilogy. This ultimately forced some actors in the movie to LEAVE social media. What kind of disgusting bullies have the power out there to ruin things for others. Are you proud of yourself, when you hear that you have literally caused a trauma to others? Do you pat yourself on the shoulder? You all, quite literally, disgust me.
To quote one of my favorite youtubers, "They are movies about space wizards! (...) Why is everyone so angry? (...) And Yoda? I mean I love Yoda too, I love him a lot: he's a puppet. He's a fucking puppet. (...) We gotta chill out man, there's more important things in life." - Dan Avidan
Let us take a breathe.
This is, somewhat, the book vs. the movie argument, as in, essentially, everyone is upset that what they imagined in their head is not the thing they can see on the screen. Completely lacking the empathy or, at this point really, the common sense to understand that the reading of a book is different for every person, meaning, if you are not the one making the adaptation, guess what, it will NEVER look exactly the way you want it.
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So let us get back to the title of this entry, and the reason you clicked. If, this is not you, I am glad you visited us here, but if you recognize even a little about yourself, perhaps it is time to think some things over.
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The first reason you are actually racist for hating a cast that is not 100% Caucasian, is because you lack the ability to think about the fact that you, as a white person, might imagine white people when you are reading a fantasy novel, but someone else, of any other heritage, will inherently imagine people of their own heritage as the main characters, unless the story or the author instructs them otherwise.
The second reason, is trying to define something within historical reasoning when it is IN FACT FANTASY. IT IS A BIG FANTASY, IT IS NOT REAL. I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH, THE LITERAL DEFINITION IS "the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things". SO THEY CANNOT BE ARGUED WITH PROPER ARGUMENTS, AS IT DOES NOT EXIST. THE LORD OF THE RINGS IS NOT REAL. If it is real in your head, in your D&D campaign, in your reading of the books, good for you, just got back to that and stop ruining it for others. It's wizards and dragons and people with pointy ears that live for a loooooooooooong time and they talk their own language. When you want to "defend" J. R. R. Tolkien's ideas and his writing you sound like an idiot! You know how we can all, internationally, no matter our age, come together and agree that literature classes are stupid, because a rose is a rose is a rose, and not some metaphor for death or life or whatever? That is who you are when you invent YOUR interpretation and you force it down other people's throats, you assume that YOUR reading is the "correct" one, you sound just as dumb as those poor literature teachers who are forced to teach what is in the text book.
What you are essentially doing is admitting to your incapability to understand that other people have other experiences. You don't see them, you don't think of them, you call it "woke", without understanding the meaning of the word. You attack liberals for "cancel culture", and "fake news" and YOU ARE NOT MAKING SENSE. Use an urban dictionary, or speak to a person of color, or from different heritage, f*cking open up your mind to the possibility that you ---and I know this will be hard to read ---, that you are NOT the center of the universe.
I don't know if this writing will reach anyone, who needs to read it. You can "uhm, actually" me in the comments if you wish. But deep down, you should just look inward, see your own biases, own them, and afterwards just think before you speak. And if you do prefer your own casting, if you prefer the book, if you disagree with someone, just remember, nobody is taking anything away from you, you can go back to the things that you love and not pick fights with strangers.
Representation matters.
Inclusion matters.
TV shows, films, books, and music WILL evolve. And you WILL learn to tolerate it. There is no more space for unfound racism in the world. There really is not.
Go watch movies and TV shows from before the 1970s if you don't want to see people of color or people of the same sex expressing emotions in prominent roles, and leave everyone else alone.
Thanks for reading!
PS: If you are one of those people who approaches LGBTQ+ issues in television with the idea of "what am I supposed to tell my kids?", just know, that we all know that you are a little p*ssy, who is scared to have an adult conversation with your kids, and expect them to evolve into fully rounded people without you being inconvenienced.
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With the war in Ukraine going on right now, we are not going to ignore them, if you want to help and make sure that Ukraine prevails in this horrible illegal attack, you can read up about what you can do on the UN's official website here!
