cassandrashipsit:

• Have I blocked more fans of color than I’ve followed?
• Did I ever follow any in the first place? 
• Do I even follow any now?
• As a white person, do I get offended when fans of color (particularly black fans) tell me my opinion about racism doesn’t count?
• Do I lash out at them for not being “respectful” enough when they correct me?
• Do I dismiss them because I think they’re rude, even though I DON’T have any business putting my two cents in?
• When racism rears it’s ugly head in fandom, do I boost the posts of fans of color, or do I write my own dissertation on the subject, even though I don’t have any fucking lived experience of racism?
• Do I regurgitate the words of black women to look “woke”?
• Do I criticism White Fandom™ while ignoring criticism of myself from fans of color?
• As a non black PoC am I contributing to anti-blackness with non critical reblogs of problematic meta, head canons, fanfic, or fan art?
• Do I reblog white washed art without negative commentary?
• Do I long for the “good old days” where people didn’t get offended by posts that are “no big deal”?
• Have I ever used the term colored?
• Have I ever used the term mulatto?
• Do I present myself as an expert on fandom racism and how bad it is?
• Am I a fucking hypocritical piece of shit who tries to malign black women because they won’t accept my tepid ass non apology?
• Do I use personal hardships or trauma as a shield against valid criticism even though one has not a goddamn thing to do with the other?
• Do I sit back and nod when fans of color make posts like this, or do I reblog them to boost them and show my support?

If you answer yes to one or more of these, you need to sit your ass down and fucking listen instead of jumping into the fandom racism discourse like you have ANY business being there Becky.

raptorific:

Seriously, it surprises me that people still don’t get that “whitewashing” doesn’t just mean “taking a character of color and turning them white,” but also applies to “focusing disproportionately on the stories of white people,” “glossing over or altering parts of a story to make it more palatable or make white people look better,” and “treating ‘white’ as the default race”

The fact that Disney churns out film after film after film after film about white people with a maximum of one film per ethnicity that showcases a group other than white people is whitewashing.

The fact that the story of “Pocahontas” (not her real name) has been substantially altered so that some of the white people in that story don’t look like such villains, with John Smith younger and Pocahontas significantly older, as well as recounting a popular myth of her saving John Smith from near-execution (a story John Smith made up to make himself look brave, the real Pocahontas told him to stop telling and hated him for using her to make himself look good, and he started to spread like wildfire after she died because she could no longer object) is whitewashing.

The fact that the characters on “How I Met Your Mother” are all white, and they supposedly live in New York City, but apparently associate exclusively with other white people (with the exception of Wayne Brady, who occasionally visits from out of town, and a recurring taxi driver) is whitewashing.

The fact that the Doctor has now been a white man a full twelve times in a row is whitewashing even though the character’s always been white, because the idea that there’s a character whose entire appearance can change in a matter of seconds, yet ends up white twelve times in a row by pure random chance, implies that white is a neutral default and other races are a deviation from that norm. 

The fact that people get really angry at the suggestion that characters like Newt Scamander or Hermione Granger could be black because the books never explicitly say “they are black” is whitewashing.

Because that’s the thing. People often assume that when someone’s race isn’t explicitly specified, they’re white. People insist that Katniss Everdeen must be white because it is possible for them to rationalize that idea in their head. People think of white as “raceless” and every other color or ethnicity as “raced,” and that’s what we call “eurocentrism.“ 

And that’s the thing about whitewashing. It’s this idea that a “person” is white, and a “person of color” is black or asian or arab or latin@ or whatever they might be.

It’s why people call John Stewart the “Black Green Lantern” but just call Hal Jordan the “Green Lantern.” It’s why Miles Morales is called “Black Spider-man” but Peter Parker is just “Spider-man.” If you want to throw gender into the mix, it’s why Jennifer Walters is the “She-Hulk” but Bruce Banner isn’t the “He-Hulk.”

People think “character” is white and “character + black” is black. There is no default race. Community did a whole episode about how a truly raceless character would look something like this monstrosity:

But there’s the tricky part: Once you stop thinking of white characters as “character” and start thinking of them as “character + white,” it becomes really overwhelming how many characters are white. 

I mean, I know there’s a kerfuffle over Disney Princesses right now, so let’s look at the list of official Disney Princesses, shall we? That is, let’s look at the list and include everyone’s race, not just the princesses of color:

• Snow White + White
• Cinderella + White
• Aurora + White
• Ariel + White
• Belle + White
• Jasmine + Arab
• Pocahontas + Native American
• Mulan + Asian
• Tiana + Black
• Rapunzel + White
• Merida + White
  Soon to be added:
• Anna + White
• Elsa + White

4 of those 13 women are women of color. All four of those women of color are different races than one another. At the moment, the number of white princesses is seven, but it’s about to go up to nine. All nine of those princesses are the same race as one another, despite a few of them being different nationalities, although most of them hail from Western Europe.

And a lot of people are saying “but they’re just accurately portraying the parts of the world those stories are set in!” First of all, the presence of a person of color has never been implausible in any part of the world, in any period of human history. Hell, a bunch of these movies were set after Shakespeare had born, lived, and died, but he still managed to write a play set centuries earlier featuring a black male lead in Italy. 

Second, and most importantly, it’s not like they are being assigned a setting at random and have to accommodate it in their character designs. The people at Disney choose to set film after film after film in France and Germany and Denmark.

It’s not that those areas produce more or better fairy tales and folk tales than any of the other continents, it’s that the stories that come from those areas are the ones Disney considers universal.

In the eyes of Disney, there’s a Princess for Black little girls to look up to, a Princess for Native little girls to look up to, a Princess for Arab little girls to look up to, a Princess for Asian little girls to look up to, and nine princesses for all little girls to look up to. It’s no coincidence that in almost all promotional art featuring the “Princess Lineup,” Jasmine, Tiana, Mulan, and Pocahontas are all standing in the back, usually obscured by other white Princesses’ dresses, while the blonde lady brigade stands in the front. 

And that is whitewashing.