Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Yes ambiguous defaults to white. I mean he looks Latino to me but he could also be a white guy with a tan

 

Either white or a non-human alien, apparently.

 

A question: is tan a skin colour or is it just a shortening of suntan? To my understanding it is the former but you people use it in the second way, so is it just I who are wrong?

 

What do you mean, "you people"?







Sorry, couldn't help myself. "Tan" is a color. "Having a tan" is what happens when you're in the sun a lot, and can often result in a racially-ambiguous character. As can the existence of various groups that are traditionally considered "white" but appear darker-skinned than, say, the average German. See: Gadot, Gal.

 

When my grandpa was growing up, he spent so much time in the sun that his skin was so dark the people in his town mistook him for a black person. It was rather sad because they wouldn't let him swim in the public pool or do other things that were white person-exclusive. It took his parents coming to the pool and telling them "Yes, this is my son" for him to be able to do any of that.

 

I am sorry but I don't fully understand. Can I use tan to describe for a person with a natural f.ex. light brown skin?


On an other note: have we seen any dark skinned epicanthix? We have seen caucasian, Yun, and the Pike sisters look asian, at least when drawn and inked by Ronn Randall and P. Craig Russell but I don't know of any "black or brown" epicanthix

 

I would love to think of Kanan as not a WHM. Otherwise I don't think I could stand him. Kyle Katarn is not that interesting to me in the first place.
The Epicanthix should be retconned out of existence.

 

Amen. No ifs, ands, or buts.

 

[wood to the fire]It seems a certain place, known to be used as a point of reference by authors, is listing his skin as "fair"[/wood to the fire]

 

Well, fair and dark do depends upon your idea of "normal": f.ex. a ethnical scandinavian who is described as dark skinned and a ethnical african who is fair are rather different

 

Well yes they use Wookiepedia but I dont think they use it for their brand new characters at least not before the show has even launched.

 

Not in a million years could that be described as "fair". Wook be crazy.

 

Ahem...

It's been changed now, but it's striking how quickly that happened. Which is why I agree that it would've been much more preferable if Pablo had just come right out and said that yes, Kanan was intended as a man of color. There's something to be said for allowing your actions to speak for themselves, but there's also something to clarifying those actions with a few simple words so there's no misinterpretation. Because people can, will, and do misinterpret almost any racially ambiguous character as white, as we all know.

 

Give me a few minutes and I'll go see what I can do...

 

Well, at the very least, people can only "misinterpret" a character in a visual medium so much. We're used to dealing with this in the context of novels, but Kanan could very reasonably be identified as Greek or something--so I can appreciate why they wouldn't want to alienate a bunch of different groups by nailing him down utterly as, say, Cuban or what have you. My feelings on this got a lot more complicated after reading this piece by CodeName_Targeter about Skye on SHIELD, who is half Chinese and passes for white to the point that I would never have noticed if it hadn't been pointed out to me. As much as the *cough* *snicker* journalist in me wants them to scream "POC" from starwars.com in big block letters, there is value in ambiguity--especially for a kids' show that's hugely susceptible to the audience identification factor--allowing the widest possible swath of kids to feel that Kanan represents them.

Now, having said all that, I still can't imagine where "fair" came from.

 

Judging by the citation, it was from the video. However, determining skin color from that is difficult due to lighting. With a bad flash or bad lighting in general, my skin is whiter than sour cream. Usually, though, it's a bit more olive.

 

I think it's entirely possible, though, to make it clear that's he not meant to be snow-white while not specifically stating what he is meant to be.

 

That's what I was hoping for. I mean, I don't need Pablo or whoever to come out and say "We're keeping him in line with FPjr, so he's part Native American, part Puerto Rican, and part assorted white." Just a simple, "Yeah, he's a POC" or a plain "No, he's not intended to be white" would be just fine.

That's kind of why Pablo's answer to Cooper and his other Twitter shenanigans joking about people discussing whether or not Kanan's a POC pisses me off. This is a perfectly reasonable question to be asking, it wouldn't kill them to give a reasonable answer.

 

Oh they should, though for other reasons, the galaxy is already full of Aliens that look like Humans but are not supposed to be Humans.

 

Kanan's nose either looks like it's been broken weirdly, or it means he's not white.

I think he's a PoC. Edit: Pablo tweeted this. I'd say it looks good.

Do we think Ezra is? Ezra is traditionally a Jewish name, right? Sorry if this has already been discussed...

 

I don't think we should expect to learn much from the names - they're chosen more often because they sound good than to indicate ties to a particular Earthly racial ancestry. Unless we think the Organas are descended from a 7th-century Bulgarian ruler.

 

Watching that preview, Ezra seemed like he could have an East Asian component to him, but that could've just been the art they were showing. I don't know that we'll ever really be able to nail either of them down--whatever you may think of it, that seems to be their exact strategy.