#influence over international views of that history but blaming poc for wanting to create media that reflects their own experiences

[cheesey-rice]

I've been getting a lot of vids from international YouTube channels bc of my foreign language interests and I see a lot of international poc complaining about American poc being in historical shows and calling it the same ahistoricality as someone casting a white person to play a poc, and I've felt that I disagreed.

Just trying to articulate this from my perspective as a 2nd gen kid... I think that folks saying poc being in like British historical type shows in positions poc definitely wouldn't have been in at that period have a point when they say studios should just produce movies/shows that tell the history of actual poc instead of misrepresenting history of predominant white countries have a point in that yes, American culture and media definitely has this huge Blindspot to history outside of a certain sphere of white American culture influences... But I still feel like there is a definite difference between a white person being cast as a historical poc vs a poc being cast as a historically white person.

Bc when it comes down to it I feel like the perspective some non-americans might not have is that when you grow up in America you are raised as an American. Poc are not exempt from the American cultural concept of what our history is. Like regardless of how u feel about the musical itself Hamilton is a good example of how something that exists in our culture as American history is something that a poc creator was able to retell as their own history as an immigrant. Regardless of the quality of the piece, one wouldn't say that the people of color in Hamilton's production are talking about or reenacting American history in an unfaithful or inaccurate way because American history is their history and an immigrant writing a view on that history from an immigrant's perspective adds a level of nuance to the piece rather than taking it away.

But in the case of a white person playing an important historical figure of color, it's completely different. Like in the instance of that famous harriet Tubman case, a white person could not play the black woman who fought the white institution of American slavery her entire life. Because victimization at the hands of the institution of slavery on the basis of race in America is a history that cannot be said to be the history of all Americans. Non-black Americans and (also most black non-americans) are not going to grow up being continually affected by the social, financial, and legal ramifications of the institution that remain in this country. A person who has never experienced a life that continues to be affected by racism is not going to be able to accurately tell a story about race. And because America has relied on racial dogma to excuse free labor and human rights abuses used to build the agricultural basis of our society from the very inception of the nation, there is never going to be a story about a black American in our history that was not in some way affected or influenced by the experience of racism.

I understand that from an outside perspective seeing an American poc just say a casting choice is "racist" can sound like oh they're saying a white person isn't allowed to play this role what about creative freedom etc etc. But like, ignoring the knee jerk reaction to call everything 'cancelling' these days maybe realize that they're saying a white actor is going to do a worse job representing a character who experienced racism than a person of color and that's just a fact. It's not restricting art to criticize that the choices behind it make the actual piece worse in the long term for very obvious reasons.