If white people were described like people of colour in books

[Denise Tanaka]

There is a strong difference in manner and superficial looks between African and Caribbeans

In my writing, I make efforts to describe characters by more than their skin. Are they short, tall, physically fit, sedentary, graceful or clumsy, etc.

All human beings are varying shades of BROWN, lighter or darker, and even the biological base skin tone varies if the person spends time in the sun or not. In that chart of faces (above) the only Asian person is very light. My first thought in looking at her face: she spends a lot of time indoors and she must be one of those people who carries an umbrella on sunny days to prevent getting a tan.

I'm of white European descent so I am as pale as they come. Once I wore shorts and sandals, and someone asked why I'm wearing white tights on a hot summer day. No, those aren't tights. Those are my legs. My husband is from Japan and he turns several shades darker in the summertime. So even that chart of faces is not a fixed absolute. And it's all so sad that there's a fixation among so many cultures of "light" skin tones being more desirable than dark. I've had people tell me that my daughters are so beautiful because they're half white, because their skin is lighter, etc. and it makes me angry. What, if they go to the beach and get tanned they aren't beautiful anymore?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Yet here "spray on tan" is big business (it rains a lot).

 

[Brian G Turner]

Found this on Twitter:

 

[JunkMonkey]

There is a strong difference in manner and superficial looks between African and Caribbeans. I can't believe there aren't sufficient actors of relevant heritage. It's just lazy or cheap research.

pH

Again (sorry if I'm derailing the thread) an actor's job is to surmount this sort of thing. If we only allowed actors to play the parts that matched their correct "relevant heritage", Anthony Sher would never have taken on the role of Richard the Third (The Plantagenets weren't Jewish), Al Pacino wouldn't have been able to play Shylock (who was), and Sam Jackson wouldn't have been able to play Nick Fury (who always seemed to be drawn as a brown-haired white guy when I read comics as a kid.)

If the roll calls for an Caribbean actor of a certain sex, age, and able to bring a level of emotional maturity to the part - say the part is for a forty-ish woman who has to deal with the on-screen death of her child - what happens if the only actors of the right sex, age, and "relevant heritage" just aren't very good in the part. They're great at comedy, can tapdance a storm, and sing like birds but can't convince that their emotional guts are being ripped out. And then in walks an African actor who nails the part on the first read through and has the casting director snivelling into his hanky. I would go for the African actor.

And (to try and drag my post back on topic) back to Shylock (and for that matter Othello), what the hell did Shakespeare know about being black, Jewish, or Italian anyway? It's art. And art expects the audience to know that what they are looking at, watching, or reading is not real but a representation of the real and should be able and ready to make allowances for (even embrace) the materials and techniques available to the artist.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

what the hell did Shakespeare know about being black, Jewish, or Italian anyway?

Very little to nothing.
He might have met North African Moslems (Moors).