When Black is white is black...wait. What?
Is it OK for white characters to be made Black? Or Black characters white? When does racial and cultural sensitivity lose its way, or is that even possible?
Issue #271 Keith’s SciFi Musings March 5, 2023
Caution: Some strong language
As in most things in life, it’s how you do a thing that matters. You do a thing wrong, or you do a wrong thing, then wrong things tend to happen.
But if you do a thing right? You’re golden, son.
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Not long ago a friend of mine sent me this Newsweek article that caught my attention for the same reason it caught his attention: we’re both Black sci-fi/fantasy geeks with strong opinions about the genre and how we’re represented - or how we represent ourselves.
In this particular article, the author (also Black) makes the argument that to turn white characters into Black ones – as seems to happen somewhat frequently these days – is not in any way a positive thing. It’s pandering and insulting and it doesn’t help the cause of improving on-screen diversity and cultural sensitivity.
For the sake of this article, the author focuses on a particular character named Maria in one of my favorite TV shows, The Last Of Us. It’s also a favorite show of the author and of quite a few others, receiving rave reviews as one of the first shows derived from a video game that got it right. I don’t play video games so I wouldn’t have a clue how true it is to the game, but the show is great.
The author, however, is quite familiar with the game and makes the point that Maria, who was recently introduced into the storyline, was originally a white woman. Ostensibly the decision was made to change Maria’s race as a nod to the importance of having a diverse cast, and of adding powerful Black characters (adding powerful Black female characters is an obvious plus). Nobody asked me, and I wasn’t in the room when the call was made, but I’m guessing this was probably the reason.
Except that the show already had a diverse cast before this woman’s race was changed, so what was the point? And did making her Black really add to the impact of the show, or make it more racially/culturally sensitive?
To be more blunt, was changing Maria’s race a betrayal of the original storyline simply to score some racial sensitivity points in Hollywood?
In the case of The Last Of Us, I think the author has a point. Although the sister playing the role is quite good (I still remember Rutina Wesley from True Blood, one of my all-time favorite vampire shows and horror shows in general), it’s hard to figure why it had to be her instead of a white woman as the character was originally portrayed.
It’s nothing I’m gonna get up in arms about, but I think it may have been an avoidable misstep. It’s not that Rutina doesn’t play the hell out of the role because she does, and this article in Vulture further explores some of the other reasons why she was chosen.
But if you wanted more Black female characters, why not simply invent an all-new character?
When you ask this question about whether or not it should be OK to change the race of fictional characters in general? Yeah well…that’s where it gets messy. Because sometimes yes, sometimes no. As I said, it’s how you do a thing.
For me, Exhibit A would be the one-season sci-fi phenomenon, Watchmen. Exhibit B would be The Man Who Fell To Earth. In both amazing remakes, all the lead characters are Black. And not only that, but especially in Watchmen, the storylines are significantly altered.
In Watchmen the altered narrative is so noticeable because it sinks those narrative roots deep into the historical and bloody racial tragedy of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which resulted in the total elimination of a prosperous Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma - the Greenwood District- also known as Black Wall Street.
Greenwood was literally wiped off the face of the map by an angry white mob who simply could not tolerate successful negroes in their midst, so an exaggerated “incident” metamorphosed into a Hulk-sized call-to-arms to defend the so-called honor of an alarmed white woman named Sarah Page.
Sarah Page was on an elevator with a Black man named Dick Rowland who apparently touched her or some shit. This manufactured “incident” was all the lit match white folks needed to burn, bomb, rape and lynch Greenwood to the ground. And then try to erase the “incident” from the history books as if it never happened.
Because if white folks say it didn’t happen, then it didn’t happen. That’s what history means. Just ask Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis.
To say the least, the original Watchmen, was one of the most revered sci-fi/fantasy comics of all time due to its remarkably intricate storyline and plot.
The plot that far surpassed any other graphic novel of its time - or any other time - was not at all about Greenwood. And anyone who watched David Bowie’s classic movie portrayal The Man Who Fell to Earth, will hardly see many similarities to the dramatic series version cast in Black, nor will they see any resemblance to the original source material, a novel published in 1963 by author Walter Tevis.
And yet. And yet…
I would argue that, contrary to the race-swapped character in The Last Of Us, what Watchmen and The Man Who Fell To Earth did was completely reinvent a story in such a way as to almost have it surpass the original. Those who are already seething that I dare suggest such a thing may have a point in that, perhaps, maybe the writers could have just called it something else, right?
The same is my question about why didn’t The Last Of Us simply create a brand new Black female character for Rutina Wesley to portray instead of race-swapping?
OK. Yeah. Maybe. But…
Sometimes maybe there’s room enough for two bodies in one suit (there’s a sci-fi image for ya). Have you ever heard All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix? Except that it’s not by Jimi Hendrix, it’s a Bob Dylan tune. Even Dylan conceded that Jimi may have outdone him on his own song.
Or maybe, even better, how about Whitney Houston’s singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Superbowl? Or Marvin Gaye? Or Jose Feliciano?
Or again Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock?
Sometimes a thing might appear to be one thing, and was perhaps even meant to be one thing one way, but then art got in the way and somehow it became a bit of something else.
Because another artist looked at the same image but through another set of eyes and saw something else altogether.
If you do a thing right? You’re golden.
What are YOUR thoughts about Black characters vs white characters?
Let us know in the comments.
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