An Asian’s views on blackwashing Asian characters:
I usually don’t speak about race-bending publicly, but after seeing other people talking about it on Tumblr and race-bending being a kinda big thing on Twitter, I’d like to make my own kind of essay about it. For now, I’ll just be talking about people race-bending my own race and that I’ll mostly be focusing on anime characters:
Not all anime characters have a specified race. When they do, they’re mostly Japanese (or at least Asian), as most anime takes place in Japan. Asians have a variety of skin tones, obviously.
I’m an Asian on the darker scale of skin tones, but Asians can have any skin tone. So, no, I am not a “white person speaking over Asians”
Asia is not just East Asia, as Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Western Asia are Asian too.
I have many problems with race-bending, especially when it involves Asian culture, which is my culture.
I’d like it if people reading this will fully read it and will understand where I’m coming from.
The character is not yours. You shouldn’t change the racial element of a character that isn’t yours.
It’s better to create your own character and have them be inspired by the character you want to race-bend.
Races are not interchangeable. Race-bending is a racist version of redesigning a character.
Artists can say “it’s just harmless fun” or “It’s not as bad as whitewashing”. Every race should have right representation. But that’s the thing. Changing a race of a character is not the right way. Race-bending any character can be very racist since it’s erasing the representation that race gets.
Whenever artists race-bend a canonically Asian character, I feel personally offended. I hate the mentality of changing a character’s race just so you can relate to them. You don’t have to change their race to relate to them. You can relate to them because of their personality, backstory, etc. You can like a character, even if they’re not the same race as you.
Black people may not be represented right (sometimes at all), but Asians (and just about every minority) also have the same problem. You can’t just “fix” a race’s problem by increasing problems for another race.
No one is Asian-washing black characters. Example, since this series has a lot of diversity: Josuke Higashikata from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable/Diamond is Not Crash. People draw Josuke, the half-Japanese and half-British character of Japanese nationality, black. You can literally look up “josuke black” and know what I’m talking about. Artists doing that are not just making Josuke’s skin color darker, they’re replacing his features with black people’s features. If an artist draws Muhammad Avdol from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, the black man of Egyptian nationality, Asian, they definitely would be called racist. But when an artist turns an Asian character black, it’s okay? No, both are racist.
The “Blasians exist” excuse: If you redesign a character to be mixed, their features should be mixed. If you erase the defining racial features of an Asian and replace them with black features, you are not drawing a Blasian, you are drawing a Black person. I really hate it when artists redraw a character as black and say they’re mixed race when they erase literally every racial feature to put in another.
Why can’t people just draw their own black character?
Why not make an OC if you want black representation?
It’s much better than altering a canon character since it doesn’t have racist elements in it.
The reason I’m writing about blackwashing and not whitewashing is because everyone seems to agree that whitewashing is bad.
Imagine taking an Asian character and making them black. Sounds racist to me.
But all race-bending is bad.
Even my mixed African-Asian friend (who actually comes from Africa) doesn’t like it when people draw Asian characters black.
As an Asian, I would much rather want to see someone having a black OC than someone redrawing characters of my own race to fit the features of black people.
As an Asian, I would much rather want to see someone having an Asian OC than someone redrawing black characters (or characters of any other race). (Then again, people aren’t drawing non-Asians Asian)
Races are not interchangeable, no matter what.
THIS. I also saw this a couple times with Yuri from DDLC
