# White people voicing non-white characters **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 24, 2020, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861 "2020-06-24T22:32:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/122 "2020-07-01T11:31:03Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > As I understand it, you have two core issues. The first being that minorities are underrepresented in “Hollywood” in general and a white person taking a Black role is only making that underrepresentation worse. The other being tied to the idea of white people “wearing” a race or culture for fun with the privilege of taking it off when they are done and reclaiming their white identity and life. Black people (for purposes of this thread) may take offense at the idea of actors playing Black for fun and profit when convenient while disregarding and being unsaddled by the trials that come with being Black in America. I would also suggest (for example) that an actor of Japanese ancestry would be more likely, based on personal experience, to know what kind of performance would be hurtful to Japanese people than Mickey Rooney would. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/123 "2020-07-01T15:17:29Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > That’s a surefire way to get poor whites angry about stuff and it is counterproductive. Well, yes, of course we must not upset the whites. That is the primary goal after all. 😏 ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/124 "2020-07-01T15:33:46Z")
I’m unhappy with it because it seems to give credence to the theory that only certain races can play certain roles, and there are so many existing roles that were created when the default was “white male” that it gives ammunition to the people who whinge about “James Bond can’t be Black” or “Heimdall can’t be Black” or “The Doctor can’t be female”, or “Spiderman can’t be Latinx”. Here’s an experience I had. I have a side hustle as a background actor. For a long shoot with multiple scenes extras will sometimes be in a holding area and an assistant director will come out and pick the ones wanted for the next scene. It’s a little like lobsters in a tank at a restaurant. There’s this background actor wearing an eyepatch. I noticed him because I’m blind in one eye, and occasionally wear a patch because covering the bad eye improves the vision in the good eye. I did not have the patch on that night. Later I see that eyepatch guy has the patch on the other eye. It turns out he sees fine with both eyes and had adopted the patch as a “hook” to improve his chances of being cast. He wasn’t half blind but his character was. As a half blind guy I was vaguely offended by this, because I felt like if the director wanted a half blind guy she should have hired one. But thinking it through I realized that the director had hired a half blind guy, me, she’d just hired me to play the role of someone with normal vision. I’d much rather be a one-eyed guy competing for two-eyed guy roles than a one-eyed guy who was only allowed to be cast as a one-eyed guy. That’s a really limited milieu. Sp I guess I’m more interested in why can’t non-white people get the existing white character roles than I am in making sure that all non-white character roles are portrayed by the “appropriate” races and genders. It would be nice if in future works more non-white characters were created, but the lack of originality in the business and the huge backlog of existing characters is going to make that a slow process. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/125 "2020-07-01T15:46:55Z")
Personally, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with a white actor portraying a Black character (or, more generally, with any actor portraying a character of a different race or ethnicity) if they can do so convincingly. (But, I admit I’m not the most sensitive person to all the issues involved.) That’s on an individual basis, though. It’s easier to understand the objections to a whole pattern or system in which Black characters are regularly and often portrayed by white actors. It’s kind of like how I don’t have a problem with white authors including Black characters in their fiction; but I do see a problem if the only, or even the majority of, Black characters a reader encounters are written by white writers. I don’t think every white actor who currently voices a non-white character has been doing something wrong or necessarily needs to give that up. But those who do as a way of pushing back against the pattern/system may well be doing the right thing. I’m curious to see what the consensus turns out to be, years from now when/if our society is more mature and advanced on matters of race. Will it be seen as no big deal for an actor of one race or ethnicity to portray a character of another? Will it be taken for granted that the race of the actor must match the race of the character? Or something else? ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/126 "2020-07-01T15:56:21Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > I’m unhappy with it because it seems to give credence to the theory that only certain races can play certain roles, and there are so many existing roles that were created when the default was “white male” that it gives ammunition to the people who whinge about “James Bond can’t be Black” or “Heimdall can’t be Black” or “The Doctor can’t be female”, or “Spiderman can’t be Latinx”. Yeah, but those people are missing the power disparity point entirely and probably aren’t really interested in learning since they’re more concerned about “protecting” the whiteness of certain characters than anything else. Plus, the topic of a white woman voicing a black character isn’t really the same thing as whether or not someone writes Spider-Man as Hispanic in a version of the Marvel universe. Although I have to admit that it gave me a chuckle since, when I read the thing about Cleveland not being real, my first thought was “No fictional character is real but that doesn’t stop people from losing their shit if 007 is a black woman…” ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/127 "2020-07-01T20:21:10Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Leghorn wasn’t voiced by an a Man, this is where the Reddit upvote button comes in handy! This cracked me up. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/128 "2020-07-01T20:23:19Z")
Oh, I don’t know about that. Look at Modern Family. Only one actor out of the characters Cam and Mitch are gay in real life. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/129 "2020-07-02T00:01:39Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > Well, yes, of course we must not upset the whites. That is the primary goal after all. 😏 The goal should be harmony. When you have a racist policy for no real reason, that is not a good thing. Not everyone is “educated” enough to understand that it is okay for a black person to play a white person, but it is terrible for a white person to play a black person. You tell some dude making $11/hr and living in a trailer how he is using his superior power in society to oppress people and I guarantee you that dude will get angry. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/130 "2020-07-02T00:58:44Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > You tell some dude making $11/hr and living in a trailer how he is using his superior power in society to oppress people and I guarantee you that dude will get angry. He’s probably not voicing a black character in an animated show though. So, really, who cares? Ms Slate made this choice herself; she doesn’t need a white trailer-livin’ guy making $11 to get mad on her behalf or even question why she “had” to step away from the role. Also, I know literally homeless people who still recognize that, as much as their situation sucks, it would suck worse if they were black. Get hassled more often by police, business owners, seen as more of a threat by passersby, etc. Making $11/hr is no barrier to understanding shit. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/131 "2020-07-02T01:17:50Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > He’s probably not voicing a black character in an animated show though. So, really, who cares? Ms Slate made this choice herself; she doesn’t need a white trailer-livin’ guy making $11 to get mad on her behalf or even question why she “had” to step away from the role. > > Also, I know literally homeless people who still recognize that, as much as their situation sucks, it would suck worse if they were black. Get hassled more often by police, business owners, seen as more of a threat by passersby, etc. Making $11/hr is no barrier to understanding shit. You think poor white guys living in a trailer making $11/hr “understand” that they might have it bad, but damn, at least they aren’t a black guy getting harassed by police? And I’m not talking about Jenny Slate. She can virtue signal all she wants. I’m talking about the larger reason of why this is even an issue at all, and if it is, why it is okay for blacks to play whites like in Hamilton. Frankly, I think it is ridiculous in 2020 to propose an argument that this particular race can do X, but not this other race. We were supposed to be moving past that, yet your argument cements a new form of racism. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/132 "2020-07-02T01:24:02Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > You think poor white guys living in a trailer making $11/hr “understand” that they might have it bad, but damn, at least they aren’t a black guy getting harassed by police? I think that they have the ability to do so (you apparently _don’t_ think they have this potential), but that’s getting off the topic in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/133 "2020-07-02T02:10:44Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > You think poor white guys living in a trailer making $11/hr “understand” that they might have it bad, but damn, at least they aren’t a black guy getting harassed by police? Why wouldn’t they? Not all poor working-class white guys are just watching Fox News and wallowing in their own sense of entitled victimhood, after all. I don’t think we do anybody any favors by patronizingly supposing that poor working-class white guys are incapable of understanding issues of racial injustice, or assuming that we always have to talk to them as though the only people whose sufferings matter to them are poor working-class white guys. [quote=UltraVires]I’m talking about the larger reason of why this is even an issue at all, and if it is, why it is okay for blacks to play whites like in Hamilton. [/quote] It’s “even an issue at all” because black people in the American entertainment industry have historically been unjustly denied many of the opportunities that white people in that industry benefited from, and consequently have remained at a relative disadvantage due to lack of influential connections, institutional clout, and proportionate representation in media. What’s difficult to understand about this? As for why nonwhite actors in _Hamilton_ are playing characters based on white historical figures, isn’t that pretty obviously a major part of the show’s message? The point is to highlight how nonwhite people were excluded from significant roles in America’s early history, because of white supremacist ideologies and laws. (Including, you know, actual chattel slavery of nonwhite people?) The nonwhite _Hamilton_ characters are essentially an alternate-history scenario: how would our perspective on the early American dream of democracy be expanded by seeing these iconic figures looking like the rest of America rather than the standard slice of wealthy white European racial aristocracy? That doesn’t seem to me very difficult to understand either. Remember, you aren’t expected to treat _Hamilton_ the Broadway musical like a straight-up US History module. (Similarly, the historical Alexander Hamilton did not in fact utter the phrase “Immigrants: We get the job done”.) > [@UltraVires](#): > > Frankly, I think it is ridiculous in 2020 to propose an argument that this particular race can do X, but not this other race. We were supposed to be moving past that, yet your argument cements a new form of racism. Well, I can see how it’s very convenient in some respects to try to redefine efforts to overcome the unequal legacy of racism as just “a new form of racism” in themselves, but I don’t think it’s very convincing. Americans, especially white Americans, are very used to picturing “normal” through the lens of inherited white advantage. Disproportionate numbers of actors, characters, news anchors, elected officials, CEOs, wealthy people, etc. etc. etc., are white because of that inherited white advantage, and we just complacently accept it as the way things naturally are. But when somebody consciously attempts to reduce a little bit of that unfairly inherited advantage, even in a purely individual and voluntary way, all of a sudden oh noes, that’s racism. Like I said: convenient. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/134 "2020-07-02T10:21:51Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Americans, especially white Americans, are very used to picturing “normal” through the lens of inherited white advantage. Disproportionate numbers of actors, characters, news anchors, elected officials, CEOs, wealthy people, etc. etc. etc., are white because of that inherited white advantage, and we just complacently accept it as the way things naturally are. But when somebody consciously attempts to reduce a little bit of that unfairly inherited advantage, even in a purely individual and voluntary way, all of a sudden oh noes, that’s racism. Like I said: convenient. You are not “reducing” an unfair advantage by creating a new unfair advantage in the opposite direction. That is 1984-style double speak. Just like how a poor white guy doesn’t “understand issues of racial injustice” because he sees your side continue to perpetuate them, just from the other direction. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/135 "2020-07-02T14:56:24Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > creating a new unfair advantage in the opposite direction It’s not a new unfair advantage. It’s rectifying a previous unfair advantage. And if you still believe it to be unfair, keeping the status quo is unfair to black people - so you are advocating for an unfair advantage anyways - you just don’t seem to ever want the unfair advantage to be directed against white people. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/136 "2020-07-02T16:43:06Z")
Rectifying the previous unfair advantage would be casting the best actor or actress regardless of race. Unless you think there is something wrong with black people that would prevent them from ever being the best actor. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/137 "2020-07-02T16:45:50Z")
Issue being that black voice actors are woefully underrepresented. So you can either think that black voice actors just aren’t as good at the job… or that there is racist hiring practices at play. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/138 "2020-07-02T16:58:18Z")
What percentage of sufficiently talented voice actors are black and what percentage of jobs are currently going to black voice actors? ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/139 "2020-07-02T17:14:06Z")
The link I posted from theGrio may help shed light on the issue, and this article (I realized it’s Popsugar, but the comment made from the producer of BoJack Horseman indicates the issue decently well I think): > **[White Actors Have Quit Voicing Black Characters They Shouldn't Have Played in...](https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/jenny-slate-big-mouth-and-kristen-bell-central-park-recast-47573848)** > > Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell have quit voicing biracial characters on Big Mouth and Central Park, but the issue is that they were cast in the first place. Unfortunately these are people’s experiences rather than raw numbers (although I think the vast amount of people’s experiences being negative in this area is something important) because: > [@](#): > > Neither SAG-AFTRA — the union representing film and television actors — nor the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative — [which tracks some Hollywood diversity metrics](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/little-meaningful-change-hollywood-diversity-report-n644031) — currently compiled statistics on the diversity of voice actors. > **[Has Hollywood's diversity discussion reached voice acting?](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/has-hollywood-s-diversity-discussion-reached-voice-acting-n861301)** > > In recent months, "The Simpsons" and "Bojack Horseman" have been criticized for casting white actors to voice non-white characters. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/140 "2020-07-02T19:05:57Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > It’s not a new unfair advantage. It’s rectifying a previous unfair advantage. And if you still believe it to be unfair, keeping the status quo is unfair to black people - so you are advocating for an unfair advantage anyways - you just don’t seem to ever want the unfair advantage to be directed against white people. Of course it is an unfair advantage. You are saying that a black person can voice a character of any race, yet a white person can only voice a white character. There’s a word for that. It is racism. Yes, past policies sucked, and if current racist policies exist, then let’s eradicate those, not create new racist policies. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861/141 "2020-07-02T19:07:00Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > You are saying that a black person can voice a character of any race, yet a white person can only voice a white character. There’s a word for that. It is racism. Nah, that’s not what that word means. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-people-voicing-non-white-characters/912861.md?page=8)