White characters come with their humanity already assured. Black and characters of colour have to prove ours. A white character (especially a white male character) is always presumed to have a deep inner life even if said inner life doesn't show up on screen but Black and other characters of colour do not get that presumption.
They tell themselves they're not racist. After all, they don't use slurs and they'd never agree with a Nazi. They're not racist. They put a Black square on Instagram and they regularly donate to Africa. They're woke! It's just they struggle to relate to the alien experiences of non-white people.
They find themselves more drawn to a white man with two lines of dialogue than they do fully fleshed characters of colour. Again, not because they're racist. It's just white background #45 looked at the camera in a way that suggested hidden depths.
It's why certain people expect me to watch a white man berate and grind down a young woman of colour in a field where women of colour are regularly ground down and then come away feeling empathy for the white man. It's why the dragon show can expand the roles of interchangeable white rapist #546 but the thought of including Nettles is too far and quite frankly an unrealistic ask. It's why a certain show about manipulative witches and a dragon reborn thought they could kill off a racebent character who survived until the very last book and that choice would be met with universal applause. I could go on and on.
And the thing is, I wouldn't mind this so much if these non racist fans weren't so intent on positioning these shows as “woke” or progressive. You talk about how characters of colour suffer on these shows and the “woke” fans shout you down with claims about realism, budget cuts or a favourite refrain, that the character of colour's story is boring. Isn't it so very convenient that these issues rarely if ever affect white characters.
