There have been quite a few diaries lately about fictional characters and their 'race' or the 'race' of actors who portray them. A comment in one of them prompted me to write this diary. I won't be more specific, because the commenter was of good will and had a point - in theory - and I generally wouldn't anyway.
Besides the two characters in the title, there have been controversies and/or comments about Santa, Tonto, Rue in "Hunger Games" (I have no idea who that is, btw), Johnny Storm a.k.a. Torch in the new "Fantastic Four" (again, no idea who that is) and many more.
Now in some of these cases black actors have played supposedly white or brown fictional characters, in the others white actors have played fictional Native American characters. That dichotomy, in and of itself is telling, but perhaps best left to another diary (although you should feel free to discuss it in the comments if you wish). Suffice it to say it's much more acceptable to don 'red-face' than 'black-face' or yellow-face' (think Yul Brynner in "The King and I" or John Wayne as Genghis Khan - or Chinggis Kaan - in "The Conqueror"), although 'yellow-face' lasted much longer than 'black-face'. It probably had to do with the disgusting caricatures portrayed in the "minstrel shows" making 'black-face' overtly racist. The social acceptability of 'red-face' has been well diaried by Meteor Blades in connection to certain sports teams. See here, here or here. His line, "anyone who defends the use of "nigger" or "chink" or "spic" or "Raghead" outside a Klan meeting or some other pocket of ignorance and hatred, gets treated like the racist s/he is," is a good one; he could have added "kyke", "gook" and many others. But I digress...
The reason I brought up that sentence (fragment) is that it makes my point.
Briefly: A black - or Asian or Native American or Hispanic or Middle Eastern - Annie is different from a white actor portraying a non-white character because white people have been using and abusing racist stereotypes to caricature, demean, ridicule, and dehumanize people of color (and others, but a Catholic or Jew, a gay or lesbian, doesn't wear an indelible mark in the form of the color of their skin). Some of these stereotypes were born of ignorance, some were born of fear, but many were bald faced lies told to justify greed and arrogance, and that is why they were nurtured and encouraged, fertilized and propagated.
Those of non-European stock were 'inferior', and must be 'shown' to be so. It was not only the destiny of the white man to rule, it was his (yes, his; definitely not her) duty; to the savages and to God. Total bullshit, of course, hence the need for denigrating those who 'needed' to be subjected. If that turned into exploitation and oppression, it was because it was inevitable, necessary, the natural order of things.
It's true that Eastern and Southern Europeans, as well as the Irish, were victims of discrimination, but it was much, much worse for people who belonged to 'inferior races', or women, LGBTs and Jews, for that matter. And it lasted much longer for the latter than the former. Few bigots today would discriminate against someone who's last name starts with O' or ends in -elli or -sky. Whites have suffered few to none of the indignations people of color have (certainly not if they were straight, nominally Christian and male) that people of color have. That's a big difference. And those differences continue. Women, LGBTs and Jews continue to suffer, but prominent members of a major party (guess which one?) at least pretend not to think they are inferior. On the other hand defenses of 'Redskins' as a team name, cantaloupes and wetbacks, lazy 'inner-city' men who won't work, a Black POTUS who isn't even American (and a Facist Communist Socialist Atheist Muslim, cough), macacas and nappy-headed hoes enjoy no such 'privileges'.
So while in theory there is no difference between a particular race playing a fictional charecter of a different race, in practice there is.
PS: I have a few notes below the menu-thing...
1) I am a straight, white, nominally Christian male.
2) In the paragraph mentioning 'black-face', 'red-face' and 'yellow-face', I in no way meant to compare the hardships suffered by the various groups concerned. As I said, a diary on this subject would be a good idea. I certainly didn't mean to imply that either African Americans or Native Americans had it worse. It's also worth noting that Japanese Americans (although not German or Italian Americans - hmmm why would that be the case?) were the last - hopefully - ethnic group to be locked up en masse in concentration camps (/
death camps of the Nazis).
3) Sorry if my use of single and/or double quotation marks was somewhat inconsistent. In general a single quote means I find the term false, ridiculous, offensive. The exceptions are when I quote someone else or, in this post, because the number of single quotes would be almost endless or I just missed one out of however way-too-many there are.
4) Double quotation marks are used for titles of films, books etc., except when they are used to maintain consistency with a quote by someone else.
5) Race is in single quotes because there is no such thing, objectively. Biologically there is exactly one human race. 'Race', when used in reference to humans, is a social construct.
5) To be clear: the obviously racist parts of this diary do not reflect my opinions but the opinions dominant at the time.
Thanks for reading.