The McGill Daily: Can you talk about the motivation behind the creation of Feminists with Disabilities? What led you to join it? 
Anna: It’s actually a bit complicated.  The short discussion is that a few women I knew with disabilities who were active in the Feminist blogosphere and I were talking about our general frustration with how disability-related issues tended to be treated there – as in, hardly at all.  Even though some of the members of FWD often blogged about disability & gender on their feminist-focused blogs – for example, Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town and Amandaw at Three Rivers Fog, as well as myself – we found that these posts were often poorly received. Things came to a very serious head when Amandaw spent some time guest-posting at popular feminist blog Feministe.  The comment threads were often full of hateful comments, including things like “once you’ve identified yourself as a person with disabilities (PWD), you’re part of a privileged group that excludes others” and people accusing Amandaw of being a  pill-popping addict who wanted nothing more than her drug fix. 
 
Fun times!
This had been going on for some time when meloukhia of This Ain’t Living wrote an open letter to popular feminist blog Feministing.  You can read it here.


I don’t quite know how this became the final catalyst, but those of us who had been talking back and forth about everything finally came together and said “Let’s just do this blogging thing explicitly. We’re feminists with disabilities, we approach disability with a feminist lens, and feminism with a disability lens.”  And thus, we did.

 
The Feministing Thing is, I think, often perceived as what “caused” FWD/Forward, but it’s more like what finally made us realize that we were basically out here on our own, and we could do better work as a group. 
 

MD: The contributors at FWD seem to be fairly geographically spread out, with members in at least three continents – how did you get in touch with your co-founders? 
A: It more just jelled that way.  I knew Lauredhel & Annaham & Amandaw from before.  I was aware of Chally, but hadn’t really interacted with her.  K0 was, I am sad to admit, right off my radar, as were meloukhia & abby jean & OuyangDan.  meloukhia contacted me after her letter went up and got linked all over the blogosphere because she was made aware of my issues about the feminist blogosphere & disability. 
 

MD: FWD seems at least partly a response to a dissatisfaction with current resources. What do you feel FWD uniquely provides in terms of reshaping feminist- or disability-only activism? 
A: I think what we provide is a variety of viewpoints in one place.  Not all viewpoints by any stretch, but a lot. 
 
I think there’s a misconception on the Internet that there are very few feminists with disabilities that are writing online, and one of the things we wanted to do is make it clear that this is not so.  This is why we try to have an updated blogroll – to make it clear we’re certainly not the only women with disabilities writing – and do recommended reading posts on weekdays. 
 
Miss Crip Chick & Wheelchair Dancer are writing very powerful stuff, and have been since before it even occurred to me to write about disability & feminism.  Amanda here as well. Also BFP at flipfloppingjoy and Renee at womanist-musings, both of whom write explicitly from a womanist POV. 
MD: Does anything in particular make your web site accessible? 
A:We worked to find a screen-reader accessible wordpress layout, and have various ways people can access the site through RSS or email so they don’t have to depend on it.  We transcribe all videos that go up on the site, often with full descriptive transcripts.  We describe all images on the site.  We provide links to “jump” from content to content.  We use descriptive links as our link-text (so a link would be “read more about underwater basket weaving at McGill” instead of “click here”).

The most important is that, when someone brings to our attention that something isn’t working for them from an accessibility standpoint, we work with them to try and fix the problem.  Ideally we’d never have any problems, of course, but we all hope that working with others can fix any that come up. 
 

MD: Do you decide together how to balance your content – like the balance of collecting news links with original commentary with personal narratives? Is there any editorial process involved? 
A: No. Well, kind of.  We discuss content a lot, and how much is too much, and we often bounce posts off each other before they go up.  I’ve got something I’m still working on right now that’s about parenting & disability that I’ve run past a few people because I am not a parent. But overall we stay out of each other’s stuff unless asked. 
 

MD: I know at FWD’s beginning, it ran a series of “Ableist Word Profiles.” How do you feel that language can intersect with advocacy? 
 

A:For me, personally, talking about ableist language is a way of reminding people that we’re here.  “Please don’t use lame to mean bad.  My husband is lame.  That particular thing is irritating, asinine or useless.”  People like to counter this with “No one uses lame to mean 
disabled people!”  Which I guess means all the time people have referred to my husband as that retarded lame-o in the wheelchair are meant ironically or something. 
I don’t always agree with the words that have been talked about as ableist – I don’t mind crazy the way many of my friends and co-bloggers do, for example, and I know lots of PWD who don’t care about lame but do care about r#tarded.  (that # there on purpose, not a typo.)  PWD do not all agree on the same things or have the same goals or outcomes or concerns.  But I do like to remind people that we’re here, and we are reading your stuff, and you can probably improve as a writer if you try and keep that in mind. 
 
 

MD: Has your experience at FWD in particular informed your engagement in disability advocacy in Canada? Can you reconcile the international nature of FWD with Canadian politics in particular? 
A: I see myself as a community member now instead of a lone voice in the wilderness occasionally ranting at friends.  The past year or so has been about making connections and community with other people with disabilities, and discussing our experiences, our work, and what happens to us.  It wasn’t until I talked to people in the US living with the ADA that I learned that it is not as awesome as I had hoped it would be – people are still struggling for employment equity. 
 
Also, through FWD I’ve found a lot of Canadians that I can chat with about issues that are going on in our areas.  Disability activism in Nova Scotia isn’t the same as disability activism in Ontario, where you have the awesome-sounding new act coming in, or in Alberta where 
I’ve found funding issues are entirely different. 
MD: What would you say are the biggest challenges remaining for feminists with disabilities in Canada? 
 

A: Oh gosh.  We could be here all day.  So, just a short list. 
 

– According to a Diabetes Attitudes, Wishes, and Needs study that’s something like 20 years old, over 80 per cent of people with disabilities in any form of care program are abused, often sexually, while in care.  Sixty per cent of their abusers are their caregivers.  One of the reasons given for forced-sterilization of women with disabilities is to prevent them from getting pregnant – and they are getting pregnant because they are being raped in care centers.  HEY FEMINIST MOVEMENT.  THIS WOULD BE AN ISSUE. 
 

– Underfunded women’s shelters often can’t afford to make renovations to be accessible.  And yet, women with disabilities are abused at higher rates than their non-disabled counterparts. 
 
-I think it’s awesome that there is increased funding for school programs and support for families who have children with disabilities.  Can we also start increasing support programs for adults with disabilities?  Because I would really like more people to acknowledge there are autistic adults, adults with Down’s Syndrome, adults with cancer, et cetera. 
 

– You know what would be awesome? If the political parties in Canada would stop acting like PWD do not exist, do not access their web sites or spaces, and do not vote.  Seriously.  I swear, I send more emails out to the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP, and the Greens about their web sites and press releases and activities than I do anything else.  And they never get answered or even acknowledged.  So, the Liberals are doing this big Canada150 event that will not be captioned, because I guess Deaf people do not exist.  That whole “YouTalk” event for the PM?  The questions could not be accessed by blind Canadians, and it was not captioned either.  Just for two examples. 
 
– It would thrill me if all feminist writers everywhere would assume that “women” includes “women with disabilities”, and stop acting like they’re doing us a favour by letting us talk about our “pet issues”. Disability crosses race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, political view, etc.  If you’re currently non-disabled and reading this, an accident or illness could have you wondering why your city has no bloody curbcuts and discussing the out-of-pocket costs of medications for “catastrophic illnesses.”  Your child, your lover, your parent, your best friend, your teacher, your favourite actor all could end up in the same boat. 
MD: Is there anything else you’d like to add? 
A: Being disabled shouldn’t mean living in poverty.  And yet, it often does.  Why are our poorest neighbourhoods also the ones that are horrible for accessibility? It’s almost like everyone wants PWD to never leave their homes.

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The elimination of any family planning or abortion services, however, will seriously undermine the potential effectiveness of this initiative. The Globe and Mail reported that Katherine McDonald, executive director of Action Canada for Population and Development, says that “no maternal-health policy can be effective without providing ways for women to space out pregnancies, because many childbirth deaths are caused by complications from having too many pregnancies too quickly or from unsafe abortions.” Giving women across the world the ability to control their reproductive health is an essential component of decreasing rates of death or disability caused by pregnancy and childbirth.

“Of the more than 500,000 women who die [every year] during pregnancy or childbirth, 90 per cent occur in Africa and Asia,” the United Nations Population Fund reports on their web site. “The majority of women are dying from severe bleeding, infections, eclampsia, obstructed labour, and the consequences of unsafe abortions – all causes for which we have highly effective interventions.”

Instead of providing preventative means of spacing out pregnancies, the Harper government has chosen to let the stigma still surrounding the many options for reproductive health limit the efficiency of Canadian aid. Helping women around the world have safe, legal abortions performed by trained professionals and with appropriate aftercare is a necessary step to reducing maternal and child mortality.

A lack of access to reproductive health services also disproportionately traps children in poverty. Population Action International reports on their web site, “More than twice the proportion of the world’s children live in poverty (1 in 3) than do adults (1 in 7), in part because poor couples often lack access to family planning services and accurate information about contraception.” Pregnancies early in a woman’s life, or disability in mothers caused by untreated complications of pregnancy or childbirth, can seriously disadvantage her when it comes to receiving an education or providing for herself or her family.

According to the National Post, International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda said the Conservatives rallied against the motion to explicitly include family planning and abortion because it contained “rash, extreme, anti-American rhetoric” intended, she asserted, to “reignite the abortion debate.” The motion rejected the Bush administration’s refusal to fund organizations providing contraceptives or abortion; the idea that this rhetoric is worth discarding an entire amendment with substantial benefits for women and children is both irrational and harmful.

Between the global gag rule of the Bush administration; the recent decision to outlaw deliberate miscarriage or “illegal” abortion in Utah; and even the new U.S. health care reform package’s rejection of public health insurance for abortion, we should be looking to the U.S. – if only to learn how to prevent a similar erosion of reproductive rights, both domestically and abroad. Women, children, and families across the globe deserve the economic and social benefits of accessing their full range of reproductive rights.

Hannah Freeman is a U3 English Literature student and The Daily’s copy editor. Write her at hannah.freeman@gmail.com.

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This logic needs to be mapped onto discussions of disability policy in Quebec and Canada, particularly in light of obstacles to immigration and assimilation for people with disabilities. Section 38(c) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act declares a foreign citizen “inadmissible on health grounds if their health condition…might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services.”

The “excessive demand” clause, like “reasonable accommodation” policies, sets up this way of thinking: able-bodied people set the standard for what is acceptable use of the health care system; beyond whatever they require, there’s a bright line where the actions we should take for people with mental or physical disabilities turns into “excessive” or “unreasonable.”

In practice, what this means is that Canada prevents people with physical or mental disabilities, even ones who pass the point system, from becoming citizens. This year, David and Sophie Barlagne are fighting to keep the lives they’ve built since coming to Quebec from France on a work permit in 2005. David owns a computer-software business and Sophie voluntarily teaches French to other immigrants, according to the Montreal Gazette. They have been denied permanent resident status because one of their two daughters, Rachel, has cerebral palsy. The Gazette reported that “Barlagne has been told they must leave the country after his work permit expires next year, because his daughter’s medical needs place an ‘excessive burden on social services.’ According to documents filed in Federal Court in Montreal, the ‘excessive burden’ amounts to $5,200 a year in special educational costs” (“Family with disabled daughter launches appeal to remain in Canada,” February 23).

They aren’t the first to lose status because of discrimination against disability – just last year, immigration officials deported Chris Mason, a permanent resident who became paraplegic while working in Canada. MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis puts it best in the open letter published on her web site: “This outdated and discredited approach views persons living with disabilities primarily as a drain on the economy and ‘a burden’ to society. It reinforces a negative stereotype that those living with disabilities continue to have to struggle against. It is even likely in this context that world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking would be rejected if applying to immigrate here.”

The “excessive demand” clause is an excuse allowing immigration policy-makers to rationalize their prejudiced belief that the social and economic contributions of people with disabilities will never exceed the costs of their health care. This economic valuation of a human life, based on the inaccurate social stigma that disabled people aren’t productive, is beyond disturbing.

What’s “excessive”? For Rachel Barlagne, Canadian immigration officials have decided it’s $5,200 per year. What if her “costs” were $10,000? What if they were $10? At what arbitrary point does able-bodied Canada decide that that price is above what her lifetime presence here will contribute, what she will invent, or whom she will help? If Canada wants a just immigration policy, we cannot allow officials to let an applicant’s level of mental or physical ability influence the make-up of Canadian society.

Hannah Freeman is The Daily’s copy editor. Write her at hannah.freeman@gmail.com.

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In practice, the pressure for immediate Haitian adoptions leads to dangerous mistakes – especially when buildings holding important documents, including records of family members, might have been destroyed in the earthquake. Adoptees of Color reminds us that “removing children from Haiti without proper documentation and without proper reunification efforts is a violation of their basic human rights and leaves any family members who may be searching for them with no recourse…. Immediate removal of traumatized children for adoption – including children whose adoptions were finalized prior to the quake – compounds their trauma.”

Haitian parents and extended family members don’t need us to take away their children, from whom they might have been separated in the chaos; they need food, water, and medical aid, and they need us to pressure our representatives to increase refugee visas and expedite reunification visas for Haitian families. Adopting Haitian children, right now, would be a disservice to both them and their communities.

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Primarily, the problem is simply that everyone seems to jump immediately to the most emotional of responses. It’s ironic that while Samantha Geimer is entirely opposed to a resurgence of the media frenzy that has made her life so difficult in the past, there are so many who leap quickly to her defence, demanding justice in spite of her wish to spend less time reliving a painful experience and more time with her husband and children.

This idea of justice then brings us to the second issue colouring this debate, reductive ignorance of what actually occurred in the Los Angeles courthouse in 1977. Yes, Polanski was initially charged with six counts: furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, lewd or lascivious act upon a child under 14, rape by use of drugs, unlawful sexual intercourse, perversion, and sodomy. However, all charges were dropped except for unlawful sexual intercourse, or statutory rape, to which Polanski pled guilty.

Why? Geimer, her family, and her lawyer decided that it would be much better to work out a plea bargain than force the 13-year-old girl to testify in court, live through a full trial, and have to deal with her name being made public. This had nothing to do with Polanski’s celebrity status or any other sort of privilege he might have exercised to get away with his crime.

Of course, the idea of celebrity does bring up another interesting aspect of the legal proceedings. Judge Rittenband, whose judicial misconduct in the case is at the very least somewhat absurd, appears to have been much more obsessed with celebrity than Polanski ever was. His attempted manipulation of both the defence attorney and the defence attorney’s arguments in the courtroom, as well as his media-conscious sentencing plans, betray him as entirely inappropriate to be judging such a case; it is for this reason that he was eventually removed at the request of the two lawyers involved. Despite the probation board’s recommendation for probation as a sentence, and the district attorney’s acceptance of this ruling, Rittenband thought it necessary to send Polanski to 90 days of “psychiatric evaluation,” not because he needed further psychological testing but as a punishment before his sentencing.

In fact, had the press not become gradually more opposed to the idea of probation during Polanski’s time in evaluation, the judge would probably have gone through with it. Instead, he called the two lawyers into his chambers before the scheduled sentencing, and attempted to work out a deal. Again, he attempted to tell them what to say in court, and then attempted to negotiate a prison sentence that he would subsequently recall for the press after the initial sentencing. Some of his suggestions were questionable, some entirely illegal. It was this unreliability of a judge who was more concerned with his appearance in the press than justice that scared Polanski into flight.

Should he have left? Of course not. Was he guilty of a horrible crime? Absolutely. But at this point in the legal process, falling into vitriolic obstinacy that he should be locked up forever is somewhat ridiculous. Polanski is not, and has never been, a threat to society since his singular abhorrent act. If one blames Polanski for running from potential jail time, one also has to be angry with the judicial process, which includes the judge and the people who negotiated the initial plea bargain, for not doing their best to put him there. The alternative, of course, is to give up being righteous, and to acknowledge the imperfect nature of justice and the importance of doing what is best for the victim.

Daniel Walber is a U3 History and Italian literature student. Write him at daniel@walberco.com.

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But where “yellowface” has at least trailed off from its heyday, the problem of white characters co-opting non-white roles continues in full force: recently we’ve seen a spate of big-budget movie adaptations that have actively erased or are currently erasing the heroes of colour of the original sources. Between 2008’s 21, recent casting for movies like Akira, Prince of Persia, and the Twilight saga (which has cast non-Native actors to play characters of the Quileute tribe), and director M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming movie The Last Airbender, an adaptation of critically-acclaimed cartoon Avatar, roles for non-white lead characters have consistently gone to white actors, wasting strong opportunities to introduce more diversity into movie theatres. What was once blatant yellowface has transitioned into a slightly more subtle form of racist casting techniques: whitewashing original sources and their characters and culture to make adaptations with white actors. In the process, the rhetoric of movie and television production companies has changed in a generally unsuccessful attempt to address modern concerns about the removal of people of colour and their stories from popular media. An unbelievably backward relic of old Hollywood, discrimination in movie casting perpetuates inequities in representation.

Kevin Spacey’s 2008 film 21 is a textbook example of modern whitewashing. Based on Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, a book by Ben Mezrich that details (and embellishes) the real-life exploits of a team of mostly-MIT students that won an enormous sum of money in casinos by counting cards and just-barely-legal blackjack techniques, 21 was a kind of love affair between heist film and math. Involving flashy casinos, a great deal of intricate planning, and a little bit of subterfuge, it was a story certainly ripe for movie adaptation. However, in the process of transitioning from real-life to movie screen, the roles of the majority Asian-American group – including characters based on key players like John Chang, Jeff Ma, and Mike Aponte – were given to white actors, including Spacey himself (who also served as a producer), Kate Bosworth, and relative newcomer Jim Sturgess. While Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira’s roles ended up as largely bit parts, the (also entirely invented) romance between Bosworth and Sturgess and the tension between Sturgess and mentor Spacey took centre stage.

The motivation behind this elimination of non-white leads does not appear to be active hatred of Asian Americans, but rather concerns about marketability that mask beliefs in widespread racism. The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) reported on their web site: “After the ‘white-washing’ issue was raised on Entertainment Weekly’s web site, [21] producer Dana Brunetti wrote: “Believe me, I would have LOVED to cast Asians in the lead roles, but the truth is, we didn’t have access to any bankable Asian-American actors that we wanted.” This argument seems flawed: while Stacey and Bosworth are fairly well-known, Jim Sturgess’s IMDB resumé seems to boast mostly a few TV spots and the lead as Jude in the flop Across the Universe. The decision to cast the relatively unknown Sturgess rather than, say, John Cho (who excelled in this summer’s hit Star Trek and the Harold and Kumar films) or television stars Daniel Dae Kim (Lost), Masi Oka or James Kyson Lee (Heroes), or any of a multitude of other stars seems to undermine Brunetti’s claim that there were no bankable Asian-American actors available. 21 even already had Aaron Yoo, who starred in American Pastime and had a large role in 2007’s Disturbia, who was clearly available, and who could have excelled as a lead rather than a supporting role as sidekick. Furthermore, with the majority of mainstream movies featuring white leads, and actual non-white roles in adaptations given to white stars, there’s little opportunity for a smaller-name Asian-American actors to become “bankable.” While successes like Pixar’s Up, with its chubby Asian-American hero, and mostly-Asian cast films like Better Luck Tomorrow and Memoirs of a Geisha should significantly dispel myths about the marketability of movies with Asian leads, they clearly persist in casting rooms, leading to further whitewashing. Though significant discussion has also arisen over whether it would, in fact, be better to cast an Asian-American actor of one nationality to play a character of a different nationality (a Chinese-American actor to play a Japanese or Korean character, for example), the substitution of more white characters seems like a disastrous solution.

The persistence of whitewashing becomes even more apparent when an original fictional source offers up such a strong, careful representation of non-white characters and cultures. Avatar: the Last Airbender was a U.S.-created Nickelodeon show, originally aimed at six to 11-year-old kids, whose fan base grew wider as it proved both original and respectful of the cultures it depicted. Its four central protagonists, Aang, Sokka, Katara, and Toph Bei Fong, must restore balance to the four nations of the world by defeating the imperialistic Fire Nation. For three seasons, as they travelled, they revealed a world that white creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko filled with elements drawn from ancient Asian, rather than European, influences. In one episode, for example, the heroes encounter and briefly live in a society where the residents wear traditional, accurately-drawn Korean hanboks. Though, problematically, Avatar used white voice actors for all of the main roles, except Filipino-American actor Dante Basco as Zuko and the late Japanese-American actor Mako as Uncle Iroh, the television show’s content and representations were highly praised.

Employing Edwin Zane, former vice president of MANAA, as a cultural consultant, Avatar and its creators took careful steps to ensure a respectful and diverse representation of its various cultures and societies. As Derek Kirk Kim, Korean-American author of Eisner-winning graphic novel Same Difference and Other Stories, wrote on his blog (derekkirkkim.blogspot.com), “Everything from the costume designs, to the written language, to the landscapes, to martial arts, to philosophy, to spirituality, to eating utensils! – it’s all an evocative, but thinly veiled, re-imagining of ancient Asia.” Instead of including fake, generic “Asian-looking” gibberish, Avatar’s creators worked with Professor Siu-Leung Lee to include classical Chinese calligraphy; instead of vague punches and kicks cribbed from popular movies, they worked with martial arts consultant Sifu Kisu to give each nation a real-world style of Chinese martial arts, including Ba Gua, Hung Ga, Northern Shaolin, Tai Chi, and Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis style. With a particular emphasis on Shaolin/Tibetan Buddhist and Siberian Yupik/Inuit ethnic peoples and culture, Avatar created heroes of colour in a world unquestionably non-European. Hailed by critics and receiving multiple Emmy nominations, Avatar was a success in both mainstream and commercial popularity and cultural verisimilitude.

Many of Avatar’s longtime fans, therefore, were thrilled at the prospect of a live-action movie, under the name The Last Airbender, to be directed by M. Night Shyamalan of The Sixth Sense and Signs. As details leaked regarding casting for the four main leads, however, an immediate outcry arose: why were Aang, Sokka, Katara, and Zuko – nearly all the major roles, and all marked as characters of colour by their features, hair styles, clothing, and surroundings – to be played by four Caucasian actors? Kim described why he found these casting decisions particularly painful: “The Last Airbender has the potential to be something like Star Wars – something with lasting value that could give new heroes to your average household in America. And to have something for Asian-American kids, and ethnic kids in general, to look up to. To let them know heroes can also look like them and speak fluent English like them. I think it could give immeasurable confidence and pride to these under-represented kids.” Instead, The Last Airbender will reinforce what Guy Aoki, Founding President of MANAA, characterized in a second open letter to Paramount as a “glass ceiling blocking off Asian-American actors from playing lead protagonists.

Hearing these casting rumours, many fans of the series, as well as MANAA and the East West Players, a prominent Asian-American theatre organization, began to decry the whitewashing, calling out Paramount for this decision. A letter-writing and protest campaign sprung up quickly, marshaled by fans who organized around web communities like aang-aint-white.livejournal.com and racebending.com – the latter of which has gone on to protest other negative representations, like the hate crime scene in recent film The Goods. Commentary on the casting was generally insightful; as fans pointed out, not only will The Last Airbender be an opportunity lost for non-white heroes, it will actively reinforce racist divisions. One fan, who blogs under the name anna and watched the show with her three Asian-American nephews, explained on her blog at ciderpress.livejournal.com, “My nephews will either have to succumb to it or untangle it later in life but they are already being cued to believe, to know that non-white people/PoC [people of colour] have no place as active protagonists in mainstream culture, cultural content, or society. They are being taught that culture, society, and the audience really means white culture, white society, and white audience.” While her nephews and other non-white audience members are generally expected, in their average trip to the movie theatre, to be able to identify with white heroes, Paramount appears to believe that an insufficient portion of their audience would be able to relate to non-white leads, rationalizing their whitewashing of the central characters for what appear to be profitability concerns.

Anna continued, distinguishing a genuine attempt at cultural adaptation from The Last Airbender’s problematic attitude: “The difference is the filmmaker/writer/content maker’s relationship with the source; whether it is one of respect and genuine exploration of cultural themes…or whether the remade content is completely severed from the original source, context, and meaning removed, whitewashed and the ‘cool’ bits left as an exotic husk to become a product of white cultural homogenization.”

The Last Airbender will feature three more white leads, stripping the original source of its potential to introduce diversity into mainstream movie theaters. With so few roles already written for non-white actors, filling these opportunities with more white actors is a significant loss. After fans wrote in to Paramount saying as much, Jesse McCartney, the white actor playing central villain Zuko of the Fire Nation, dropped out citing scheduling problems and was replaced by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire. The other main villains of the destructive Fire Nation were then cast as other non-white actors, including Cliff Curtis, of New Zealand Maori descent, and Indian-born actor and Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi. However, the new casting ensured that the movie would feature three white leads, uniting the world and saving the Earth Nation (which Paramount explains in a letter in response to MANAA to be comprised of “Asian, East Asian, and African characters”) in order to defeat the evil and Fire Nation, as represented by and comprised of only non-white main characters. Aoki explained, “Re-casting the sole villainous lead with an actor of colour is a concession that results in three heroic nations going to war against an evil nation of colour.” The dynamic here is possibly even more troubling than four white leads: pitting a coalition of brave white heroes against non-white villains presents as an obvious case of the menacing non-white Evil Other, while the trope of white characters swooping in to redeem a nation of non-white characters with virtually no agency or autonomy is a tired, colonialist one.

Members of the production cast and crew have demonstrated a cluelessness that indicates a general lack of concern for these issues. The casting sheet shows that the four main protagonists – all non-white in the television show – were described to potential actors as “Caucasian or any other ethnicity.” Not only is this casting description distinctly slanted toward Caucasian actors (compare with “All ethnicities” – which technically means the same group of people but has a very different actual meaning), it reinforces “Caucasian” as the default, the normal, the ideal. Lisa Zhu, having attended an extras casting call, reported in the Daily Pennsylvanian that casting director Deedee Rickets advised prospective extras “to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire.… If you’re Korean, wear a kimono” – confusing kimonos and hanboks, essentially melding two distinct cultures together – and said, “It doesn’t mean you’re at a disadvantage if you didn’t come in a big African thing. But guys, even if you came with a scarf today, put it over your head so you’ll look like a Ukrainian villager or whatever.” Further, when asked to comment on the whitewashing controversy by MTV.com, Twilight actor Jackson Rathbone, playing Sokka, said “I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan.… It’s one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit.”

Even the accurate calligraphy of the show will reportedly be cut; Lee stated on San Francisco’s 94.1 KPFA radio in July that he would not be working on the movie production as a cultural consultant, and said that the Chinese calligraphy would be replaced with gibberish – as if the two are indistinguishable or in any way equal. Cliff Curtis, playing evil Fire Nation leader Ozai, also spoke to Sci Fi Wire about his movie costume: “It’s sort of like a cross between Roman and kind of Greek, [a] gold, Roman and Greek military/samurai military [uniform]. It’s really, really beautiful.” Replacing the Fire Nation’s costumes on the television show, which incorporate traditional Chinese elements, with costumes of European ancestry – no matter how beautiful – loses sight of the thoroughly ancient Asian setting that made Avatar almost unique in U.S.-created television. Having largely stripped the original universe of its non-white heroic characters, its non-white writing and language, and its non-white clothing and costumes, The Last Airbender has already been indisputably whitewashed.

anna recalled, in a blog post in response to the initial casting news, “During our early Christmas dinner this weekend, the oldest of the nephews, who is 13, brought up the subject of the incredibly white child actors that had been picked for the film version. The three of them were confused and disappointed but unable to articulate exactly why. Then the youngest, all of 7 years old, asked me whether this meant that he couldn’t be Aang when he played Avatar with his friends from now on.” The erasure of non-white characters from big-budget adaptations is not a passive problem or a victimless mistake: it is an active decision by major production companies that, considering how many movies the average North American sees in a year, significantly frames the way we think. Paramount should not be financially rewarded for apparently attempting to ensure that the only heroes we see are white ones.

The Last Airbender is still in production. For more information on the continuing protests, updates can be found at aang-aint-white.livejournal.com and racebending.com.

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