this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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Why does it matter that the characters retain their original races?
Imagine if you just made Peter Parker black. Cool, I guess. But is it enough just to swap the skin color? IMO, it is not. You have to represent the culture as well. So you change the family dynamics, the character background, relationship dynamics etc... after all of that is it still essentially Peter Parker? If so you have succesfully race swapped a character but most of the time I think it fundementally changes the character. At that point I believe it is better to create new character like Miles Morales and call him Spider-Man. But that is just my opinion.
It's interesting that you picked Spider-Man as the example of creating a different character being a better alternative, because there are plenty of racists out there that really hate that Miles Morales is even a thing. They would say "Why do we need a black Spider-Man? The original was fine!"
It's almost like racists are only ever going to whine about inclusivity, and "characters remaining their own race" vs "creating new characters" is a moot point because the people out there who are upset by the former are going to be upset by the latter anyway.
Imagine if the new scooby show had a cast of all white kids and a single black, well written character was added and made a pivotal role in the gang. The exact same people complaining now about race swapping would be complaining then about the new character being shoe horned in because of "woke" inclusion. Just like they do with Miles Morales.
The answer is just that we need to keep creating media with both of those scenarios and accept that shows created with a single color cast are products of their time and we can do better now. Racists aren't going to be happy either way.
Edit: Bring on the downvotes. If you consider "they're not supposed to be that race" as a valid, lone criticism of a character, you might have to ask yourself some difficult questions.
Idk why I feel this way, but I feel like "but I like Miles Morales" is becoming the new "I voted for Obama so I can't be racist", which had replaced "I'm not racist, but..." for a while.
I'm not racist, but I voted for Miles Morales