{"id":12787,"date":"2010-02-10T23:21:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T07:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2010\/02\/10\/12787.html"},"modified":"2010-02-10T23:21:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T07:21:22","slug":"who-does-whitewashing-hurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2010\/02\/10\/who-does-whitewashing-hurt\/","title":{"rendered":"Who does whitewashing hurt?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Ellen Oh, a Korean-American writer, is one of many people who've blogged about the shameful whitewashing of the cast of M. Night Shyamalan's forthcoming movie <cite>The Last Airbender<\/cite> (based on the TV series <cite>Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/cite>, which btw has nothing to do with the movie <cite>Avatar<\/cite>).<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Oh's oldest (ten-year-old) daughter read the <cite>Airbender<\/cite> blog entry, which led to a <a href=\"http:\/\/elloecho.blogspot.com\/2010\/02\/conversation-about-racism-with-my.html\">conversation about racism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sample:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Oldest - You said that as long as I study hard and get a good education, then I can be anything I want, but that's not true is it.<\/p>\n<p>Me - It is true, why would you say otherwise?<\/p>\n<p>Oldest - Because when I grow up I want to be an actor, but how can I when they won't give me a chance? If they'd rather have whites be Asian characters then what is left for me?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So, who does whitewashing hurt? I'll tell you who:<\/p>\n<p>It hurts kids.<\/p>\n<p>(Among other people.)<\/p>\n<p>I normally don't make \"think of the children\" arguments. But Ms. Oh's post is heartbreaking.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven't heard about the <cite>Airbender<\/cite> whitewashing, here's a good <a href=\"http:\/\/www.racebending.com\/v3\/featured\/the-last-airbender-primer\/\">starting point<\/a>, on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.racebending.com\/\">Racebending<\/a> website. See also the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/racebending\">racebending<\/a> Facebook group.<\/p>\n<p>And if you have a Netflix subscription, you can watch episodes of the original TV series online. It's fun, and the episodes are short.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ellen Oh, a Korean-American writer, is one of many people who&#8217;ve blogged about the shameful whitewashing of the cast of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,95,27,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-race-ethnicity","category-speculative-fiction","category-television"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}