Korra + Asami

Before I address this, please note that this user is only 15, so first and foremost, be respectful. If you have anything to add on, please do it from an educational standpoint and refrain from being toxic or harmful in any way, shape, or form.

This post is not to come off as an attack towards this particular user, but as an educational piece. For any person who may be considering doing edits like this, please read this piece before doing so. If you do see someone doing these and want to address the inherent issues with the creator, feel free to send them this information.

I would like to establish that I believe these conversations should be between POC and the people directly involved. So to make this clear, I am an Asian American (Chinese) non-binary (they/them/their or she/her/hers) queer person. I want to assure you, Ness, that I’m not some white person hiding behind anon and am coming to you as a concerned POC. 

So to start off, I actually did take the time to go over your sources, which consisted of opinion pieces on youtube, twitter, and wordpress. I would not consider these creditable or educational resources, but will be breaking down some of the larger issues presented in them. 

The White and Black Binary

Oftentimes people are consuming media from Asian countries (specifically East Asia) and viewing it as ‘white’ through a westernized lens. Within a lot of the sources that were cited, they referred to these predominantly Japanese characters as white. The resources shared were opinions about whitewashing vs blackwashing, but neither of those are actually occurring within this context. Whitewashing has historical context and is truly an issue with a legitimate definition. On the other hand, blackwashing is a new term that is not widely accepted or defined properly. I agree that blackwashing is not an actual term or even a thing, but there is the idea of racebending. Racebending is a term that started back in 2009, created during the time of the live-action Avatar the Last Airbender movie. This term can be broadly used to describe changing the canonical race of characters, usually applied to Live Action adaptations. Whether this is detrimental or not, we will get into more detail further on. I want to establish that this conversation is specifically about Black POC and Asian POC, which is why racebending is a more correct term and why I will be using it going on. 

Context is Key

We are talking mainly about Manga and Anime, this means that the majority of characters are naturally coded as Japanese because the media was created by Japanese creators for a Japanese audience. If we break down anime and manga, they love to use unique hair colors, from natural colors to bright pinks and blues. The characters are never coded as needing to dye their hair. It is just natural and what they were born with. This color freedom applies to their eye colors, skin tones, and everything in between. The characters are not given distinguishing “Asian” features such as narrower eyes, specific face shapes, hair color, etc because it’s for a Japanese audience. This is not the case for Western animation, as they lean heavily into making characters clear in their identity and that’s due to the American Audience they are catering to. None of this makes Japanese anime/manga characters white in any way.

On top of this, Asians are a diverse diaspora who can naturally have blond hair, blue eyes, freckles, wavy/curly hair, etc. The argument that the characters are ambiguous or ‘white’ is actually detrimental to the Asian people who do have these traits. I have addressed this in more depth a while back in regards to Asami Sato from The Legend of Korra (x). In this post, I also bring up the fact that there are Asians of every skin color. From light to dark, Asians cover that whole spectrum due to the large expanse that is the Asian continent. 

Broadening Our Horizons

Growing up, I grew up in a predominantly white area in Maine. Maine, for context, battles it out every year with New Hampshire and Vermont as the whitest states in the United States. It’s a highly homogeneous place, meaning that peoples' views of society and culture can be very limited. From my travels and living in multiple different states, my opinions, beliefs, and more have shifted over time.

During my time in Maine, I accepted the idea of not having representation, or being the only Asian person in the majority of situations that I was in. It wasn’t until later that I got into anime, manga, Asian music, Asian dramas, and more. The representation that I saw from this was huge. So to see these characters being racebent is problematic because in your attempts to “add” diversity and representation, you’re also “removing” it from others. You are consuming media made specifically by Asian people and removing the Asian people from it. 

To address the representation of Black characters in Asian media, I’d like to actually go into some statistics and break down how that informs the media that is created from those countries and areas. As a note, this will be from a more Americanized view on the statistics. 

In 2017 Japan had a foreigner percentage of 1.9. This means that it includes all foreigners, as in people who have immigrated to Japan. The breakdown of foreigners was majority Chinese, South Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino. Within this 1.9%, only a fraction of these people were from the United States (3.7%). This meant that only 55,713 people in Japan were from the United States and this does not break down the percentage of Black Americans. Since this does not include race (especially race according to American society), within that 55k we could make a generous assumption that half of them were Black, meaning that only 27.5k Black Americans were present in Japan. Japan’s overall population was 127,502,725 in 2017. 

This makes Japan even more homogenous than Vermont or Maine if we decide to make the Asian population a monolith (which it is not) in Japan. Due to this homogeneous nature, this leads to their media being focused on the people that live there. And this generally does not include Black representation. But this also does not mean it’s an issue within their society. It does become an issue when their media is being internationally distributed through the internet. And this issue does not specifically stem from Japan, but the overall viewing of these shows and comics through a westernized lens. Please note that this does not dismiss the racism and colorism that occurs within the country’s borders. This is rampant in the country since it is so homogeneous and people’s decisions are often led through stereotypes, preconceived misconceptions, and prejudices. 

In comparison, we can also look at the treatment of Asians in South Africa (x)(x). There is a history of enslaving Asian people in different parts of Africa. The people affected were mainly South and South East Asian (x)(x). This racism has continued on and to this day South Africa’s Asian population is 2.5%. I want to share this information so that we as people can broaden our views and realize that what we perceive and see as racism in one country, does not apply to another. The oppressive and oppressed groups change and flip depending on the society and culture we are discussing. 

I wouldn’t go around taking the animated characters from African made creators and changing them to any form of Asian. And that’s because I want to embrace the culture and identities that the creators had made in the first place. If I want more media from a certain source, then that is the media that I would seek out. If I want to put myself into a world that I love, then I would not change the appearance of the already created character, but make my own OC and place it in the world and be clear that is my intention. 

Discrimination and Oppression

I’d like to give some more information about the oppression and treatment of Asian people within the context of the United States. Throughout history Asian people have been oppressed, whether it be Japanese Internment Camps, Chinese Immigrants slaving away on the Transcontinental Railroad, or more relevant things such as yellowface in movies and media. Asian people have been treated poorly and even now the amount of Asian hate is still ever prominent and rising. On top of this, the model minority myth that still somehow is circulating and being taught, is just as detrimental. Keep in mind that South East Asians are actually more comparable to Black POC in America. For example Cambodian Americans sat at 19.1% living below the poverty line in 2015. This is comparable to the 19.5% of Black Americans in 2020. 

The oppression of Asian people in America has always been present and honestly it makes it even more difficult to take when something detrimental is occurring due to other POC. This isn’t some oppression olympics where I’m trying to make our struggles sound worse, but it’s to show that ALL POC (in the US) have experienced hardship specifically through the hands of the white man. So instead of tearing one another down or removing representation from one another, we should be embracing our cultures. We should be uplifting and supporting one another. Our shared experiences should make us more empathic, more open, and accepting of one another.

Flipping the Conversation

If Asians, specifically East Asians were to take canonically black characters (such as characters from the Boondocks or Black Dynamite) and make them Asian, would that be problematic? I know this question has been asked in regards to whitewashing, but in this case it’s taking someone who is a POC and making them another POC. This would be problematic due to the removal of representation from another minority. Whether it’s taking an Asian character and making them black; taking a black character and making them Asian; taking any POC character and making them white; each of these instances are problematic and can be detrimental.

To get a bit more personal, when I see all of these edits of anime/manga, when I see these videos and your cited sources mainly talking about whitewashing and blackwashing, I feel that my own Asian identity is being erased. When the rebuttal of “well Blasians exist” is used, I of course agree with the statement, but not in the context that it is being used. By using this as a reason to racebend Asian characters, it inherently shows that this isn’t really about Asians because it automatically involves Black POC. There are so many other darker skinned Asian people, whether they be Camodians, Filipinos, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai or any other people from the many Asian countries. The argument removes the diversity of Asian people, whitening the population through a western gaze. So it truly feels as if this conversation isn’t about Asians and Black POC, but Whites and Black POC. 

I hope that this post coming from an Asian American may bring new light to the conversation. And even if this doesn’t adjust or change your mind in any way, then that is fine. Maybe it will for someone else.