Hot take that shouldn’t even be a hot take: if you hate POC Gordon Freeman you are racist. If you hate Black Pinkie Pie you are racist. If you think “blackwashing” is even NEARLY as bad as whitewashing you are a racist douchebag and I hate you. Whitewashing is arguably MUCH WORSE by a 1000% because you are removing the melanin from a POC character because you want them to be white and that makes you racist. If you hate “blackwashing” because it makes characters in which their race doesn’t matter POC you are racist because you should find that acceptable. If you take Darwin from TAWOG and turn him into a POC human I don’t think he’s gonna care because he’s an orange fish. Gordon, in almost all medias, has no lore that can object you from making him POC; his only lore is that he went to work late, fought aliens, got kidnapped for 20 years, then fought more aliens. If you think a character “looks wrong” because there was more melanin added to their skin I think you are racist. “Blackwashing” is more often than not used as a way for people of color to create characters that are more like them and show them through that character by making them POC. Whitewashing on the other hand is removing that by making a POC character white. That is arguably much worse. Race culture is not just racism. If I wrote a POC character in a book and the entire book was *just* them going through racism and there was NOTHING else to it, I probably wouldn’t get very good reviews. If I remove the racism from the story and I’m left with no character at all, I haven’t written a character, I’ve written what I think race culture is; *only going through racism.* This is bad. That would make me racist. “Blackwashing” is not NEARLY as bad as whitewashing and I will stand on that hill for the rest of my life. Flame me if you want but I spoke my truth
