It’s 2020 and Marvel still messes up diversity casting?
I know everyone is excited because of the recent news Marvel has announced at Disney Investor Day. Personally, I haven’t been able to fully indulge in it given the recent circumstances that has been happening in the US. However, there’s a certain news that left a bad taste in my mouth. What am I talking about exactly? I’m talking about America Chavez.
As a biracial Puerto Rican myself, this is unacceptable. I look at this, look at the actress and I feel grossed out. I have to keep reminding myself to not take it upon the actress but I ponder if I should, since when someone auditions for a role, they MUST have SOME knowledge about the role they are auditioning for.
There’s something a lot of you need to realize. Hollywood has a bad track of hiring Latinos, Hispanics or a brown people to play each other. Especially white casting directors, writers, producers, directors because at the end of the day this doesn’t affect them; they just need the space filled, doesn’t matter by who as long as they at least look the role. This is stereotyping Latinos playing other Latinos.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this has happened in Doctor Strange. Many of you may or may not recall how the role of the Ancient One, an Asian man, was given to Tilda Swinton, a white woman.
The reason this doesn’t get called out as often is because it was given to a woman. Erasure of a minority for another minority is STILL ERASURE even if it was done to make it more "approachable" and by that I mean straight up WHITEWASHING.
In the case of America Chavez, this was Marvel infamously placeholding. What does this mean? It's what I call when they couldn't bother find an appropriate person to fill the role so they went with the "next best thing".
No one should be celebrating these people insulting your intelligence and yet people are applauding the decision to cast a light skinned indigenous Mexican girl for the erasure of one of the FEW if not THE most well known established Afro-Latina Caribbean PUERTO RICAN superhero (the other three are the mantle of the White Tiger and the last two were americanized women of puerto rican descent).
I know people are going to mention that she's an alien and that she represents brown people alike and that's all fine and dandy. However, one can not ignore her being black and the acceptance of puerto rican culture as part of her identity. You can NOT call this representation when they are literally misrepresenting the charaters herself.
This is all done with the illusion of "diversity" and it's pretty damn disappointing y'all are so accepting with this knowledge that you're okay with because it's “at least diversity” even if at the expense of another marginalized group.
