Sorry for being unclear. “The actress” refers back to my previous post about the character Buffy. The other part is talking about the main character, unsurprisingly named Andi. (If you missed it, the show is named Andi Mack.)
One point of my post was that the main character is already multiracial. So I don’t think they added another multiracial character just to check some diversity checkboxes, as SlackerInc proposes.
Deliberately ambiguous ethnic characters are a thing though, for some reason studio executives thing if you make somebody multiracial people of all the characters included ethnicities will rally behind them, as opposed to the real life reaction of maybe one side will “take” him as their own while the rest don’t really seem them as them at all.
It’s like the classic example of Miles Morales in Spider-Man who is half black and half Hispanic but you only ever see him discussed as a black character and celebrated as one, I very rarely see people discuss of him in "Great Hispanic Superheroes " except as a token mention and every single Hispanic person I know of who is into comics doesn’t really see him as Hispanic either. The editors really should have just made him a fully black character instead of tip-toeing around race by trying to make him half and half.
Even with this cynical interpretation, this doesn’t work. Why make him black and risk black people not identifying with him, when you can make him black and Hispanic and have two shots?
That said, I don’t think you have it right. You’re making it too much about representation rather than diversity. The point isn’t to become the favorite comic for Hispanic and black people. The appeal is just to have diversity and thus attract an audience who enjoys diversity. If anything not having him just be one thing is a way to make him not just “the black superhero” or “the Hispanic superhero.”
The only representation is mixed race representation–no longer acting like people can only be one thing. And the point of that is not to draw in all the multiracial audience, but everyone who enjoys having this diversity.
I’m white. You’d think an all white show would be more appealing to me. But, no, it feels weird and wrong, unless there’s a good reason for why everyone would be white.And I live in a white place. I can’t imagine how unrealistic it would feel for people who encounter diversity all the time to not see any.
Finally, I note a difference. Miles Morales has specific ancestry. The Buffy character does not seem to be(though the hair clearly implies black, due to explicitly making it a plot point about her not straightening it). The actress only has rumors about her ancestry, based on looking at her parents.
Well, I say finally, but I have more to say. This isn’t really the subject of this thread. I only addressed the issue because I wanted SlackerInc to realize he shouldn’t jump to these assumptions. Originally I was just going to say “why is her race relevant? This thread is about girls beating boys at sports and similar.”
Because, to be clear, he is wrong. The character is not there to check any boxes. She’s not the token “ethnic” character. The interpersonal drama about race is part of purpose for the show.
Only have a second until much later, but I wanted to thank BigT for finding the clip!
Also to say the ambiguous ethnicity casting is not about tokenism. I think it’s sort of the opposite: they would prefer virtually all characters look like this. What I see as unfortunate is that it becomes a kind of whitewashing: diversity on display, but limited to those who are plausibly sort of white. This potentially reinforces already unfortunate tendencies toward intraracial discrimination in favor of the lightskinned members of black and Latinx communities.
More later!
…while colourism in Hollywood is an important subject to discuss: cheerfully and offhandedly referring to a person you happened to have seen in a random moment on screen as being “ever-so-slightly nonwhite” is most definitely an inappropriate way to address it. Especially when you choose not to clarify the wording until you were called out about it.
I also found the “ever-so-slightly nonwhite” description rather baffling because (and of course these things are largely a matter of individual biases and perceptions) the basketball-playing “Buffy” character in pictures that I saw appeared much more than “ever-so-slightly” nonwhite.
Yes, I can see how if I were told that the character identified as white I wouldn’t have thought that particularly unusual or unlikely, but just from looking at her pictures I would have taken it for granted that the character was someone who identified as black. IMO, that doesn’t equate to “ever-so-slightly nonwhite”.
Colorism is a valid concern, but I don’t see how you can get there from seeing just her and two white characters. It’s still something where you’d need to be familiar with the show to argue.
It sure seems to me that you saw a character who is mixed race and just jumped to conclusions. Conclusions that, BTW, don’t have anything to do with the question you were asking in the OP. I still don’t get why you mentioned her race at all.
I also suggest you take a step back, and pretend someone else wrote that post. Look at it from a more general perspective. It’s a post asking whether having a “slightly non-white” girl beat a white boy in basketball sends bad messages to “the children.”
Can you see how that might not come off as benignly as you likely intended?
To an average high school player, maybe. Not to a top high school basketball player.
“One of the black comedians”?
I just remembered someone I went to school with. She was an outstanding basketball player, could easily beat most boys in one-on-one games when I knew her. She later went on to have a terrific career at the university level, the Olympics, and professionally. Of course, this individual was fantastically talented.
I haven’t seen the series mentioned above, so I don’t know whether the young girl was meant to be a typical player or a truly talented athlete. But even children can become sophisticated viewers and recognize whether a certain scenario is realistic or straining credibility. I doubt most children would expect to become star athletes automatically, based on fictional representations. However, if a child watching such a series comes away from it thinking that basketball looks fun and she might want to give it a try, that’s all to the good.
I think it was Chris Rock but I dont remember.
Damn you, I still have work to do today! (shakes fist) 
Right? I always approach TVTropes with trepidation, because I can’t resist clicking the many hyperlinks to other tropes, and that can really become a neverending black hole.
Okay, I could point out that Cheryl Miller is 6’2” and a WNBA Hall of Fame basketball player. But we don’t even need that: she wasn’t playing one-on-one against individual boys, she was playing two-on-two with her brother Reggie, an Olympic gold medalist and NBA Hall of Famer. He could have picked any random girl as his partner and beaten those duos.
Yes, fine. I should have left it out, as it’s a distraction. Or at the least, clarified. I thought it was clear that my snark had to do with the “ever so slightly” aspect (Disney trying to have their cake and eat it too).
As for why I mentioned it: it’s part of the reflexive PCness of the whole thing: making the winner a spunky female POC and the loser, who is made to look foolish, a not-at-all-slightly white male who seems to have a very bland personality.
How does your description not equate to exactly that? You say when you see her, you would expect she identifies as black, but if you learned she identified as white, it wouldn’t seem “unusual or unlikely”. To me, that sounds even a little less sure than I was about her being a POC! I never said “she might be white or nonwhite, I’m not sure”.
Okay, I try to stay away from message boards, social media, and email on the weekends—so I’ll be back sometime Monday. Have a good weekend, everyone!
Meh, like I said, these things are largely a matter of individual biases and perceptions. To me, the phrase “ever-so-slightly nonwhite” suggests “somebody I would pretty confidently guess to be white but wouldn’t be too surprised to find out I was wrong”.
The character of Buffy, on the other hand, seems to me like the reverse of that: i.e., somebody I would pretty confidently guess to be black but wouldn’t be too surprised to find out I was wrong.
That’s not what I personally would call “looking ever-so-slightly nonwhite”. YMMV.
This is one of those tropes where, despite being well-intended and positive in its individual examples, the overall societal impact is subverted by its sheer ubiquity.
The implicit message picked up by children as they internalise the underdog trope is that females are inherently inferior.
In this light, I would say the OP has correctly identified that there is an issue, but has read the implications backwards.
It’s not that the trope encourages girls to believe they can achieve more than is possible; its that it tells them that, unless they are truly exceptional, there’s no point even trying to compete with the boys.
How do you figure? What, in a scene like that, screams “this is impossible”?
Best I can come up with is that the girl shouldn’t have to beat the boy to show that she is valuable to the team. She shouldn’t have to prove herself as better.
So let me make it clear that she didn’t. They made sure to establish that TJ wanted her back on the team before they played. Only once the outcome didn’t matter did they have them face off.
At no point is Buffy portrayed as any sort of underdog nor particularly gifted. She’s just a normal girl who happens to be good at sports: she was on the track team the previous season and played basketball this season.
Women, once puberty hits are much, much worse than men at almost every sport that requieres speed, height, strength, or endurance.
The female football world champions have trouble beating under-17 school boys’ teams, for instance. Olympic women0s records are good high-school numbers for men.
A women in the top 0.1% of her sport is as good as a guy at 90%, which is just the borderline between amateur and semi-pro.
Anecdotal cases may exist.
Here in Peru we had our golden generation of female volleyball players which won silver at Seoul 88, it had possibly 10 of the best 30 Peruvian female athletes. In those days (even today, but much less) volleyball was considered a girly sport and men who played it were always teased for being gay. If you didn’t go for football, then you went for track, basketball, tennis, and at the very end of the list volleyball. Even that golden generation was pulverised by the male team that only had guys who were not good at any other sport. They lost to under 21 and under 19.
This is why the girl-beats-boys trope works. We remember Spud Webb because he almost unique.
One sport in which gender makes no difference is shooting.
Now will Disney ever have a story about a girl winning in a gun event like skeet/trap shooting or rifle or handgun?
Now you see fantasy movies all the time of girls doing archery but do we see movies of girls/women doing archery in real life?