Could you elaborate on the Animorphs part of your post? I’m reading the series and I don’t think I’ve gotten to that plot point yet, and want to know more.
In reference to this post, where I said in addition to a bunch of other stuff about tactics white authors use to justify slavery in their settings:
The white Animorphs writers deciding to make Cassie, the only Black character in the whole series, be the one who's defending slavery isn't magically not racist because the white authors made up a Black person to be on their side. That's just increasing the levels of racism because they're literally using Black people to promote their own fucking slavery apologism!
Long story short, the white writers (all under the name of KA Applegate, who used many ghostwriters) decided, multiple times, to make Cassie sympathetic to slave owners, arguing that they need to be prioritized over the slaves they’re actively torturing, and arguing that the Hork-Bajir were never *technically* enslaved, in response to Rachel saying no Hork-Bajir would be enslaved again that day, because they would stop the slavers.
The white writers literally used their single Black character, multiple times, to argue the technical definition of slavery to say that the Black-coded alien species weren’t really slaves, and had her say that slave owners should be prioritized over their slaves, because she’s such a good person that she’ll even befriend slave owners, and fuck the slave they’re literally torturing right in front of her.
As I said in the post linked up there, this is a common tactic white authors will deploy to defend slavery in their setting. Just make the slave owners / slave owner sympathizers Black and brown people, and look! Now you can pretend you're Totally Not Being Racist, "because, look!!! The Black and brown people I literally made up agree with me that slave owners aren't *really* that bad! And was that *really* slavery? If you think about it, technically—" all so they can convince other white people who already agree with them that they're Actually Progressive for downplaying slavery and arguing its technical definition to avoid admitting that enslaved people were, in fact, enslaved.
