Why Do Racebent Castings Make Everyone So Angry?

It has been over 60 years since Malcolm X’s speech where he declared that “the most disrespected person in America is the Black woman,” and in a twist that will shock no one who pays attention to current events, that is still true. 

Hollywood is no exception to this, and while there has been a sharp increase in the representation of Black women and girls on the big and small screens, that improvement has been hit with an astronomical amount of misogynoiristic backlash. A significant portion of this racist vitriol is aimed at Black actresses who are cast in “racebent” roles. While the history of racebending characters in genre TV reaches back to Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman in the 1960s Batman series, the practice exploded after the 2014 casting of Candice Patton as Iris West in The Flash. The series was a massive success (what show makes it to Season 9 these days?) and Patton’s Iris opened the door for dozens of characters that were white in their source material to be portrayed as other races. 

The majority of racebent castings put Black actresses on screen. Without Patton’s success in her role as Iris, we may have never gotten to see Zendaya as MJ in the MCU, Anna Diop as Starfire in Titans, or Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney’s live-action Little Mermaid. Those castings—and many others—were embraced by many, but where there is love for Black women, there is also, inevitably, unwarranted disdain. Many black actresses have spoken out about the nasty reactions to them simply doing their jobs. In being the first of these racebent castings, Patton faced so much harassment that she considered leaving The Flash during its second season, stating on The Open Up podcast that it is “a very dangerous place to be in when you’re one of the Firsts,” and the unfortunate truth is that not much has changed in the last decade.

To the detractors of racebending, White Iris West is one of the first in a long line of “gingercide” victims. The oldest use of the term in this context was in a 2018 tweet about April O’Neill being Black in Nickelodeon’s Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where the character was voiced by Kat Graham (another target of fandom racism). The term reappeared again in 2019 before becoming a true staple in the racist-language-arsenal following Halle Bailey’s casting in The Little Mermaid. #SaveOurGingers was the caption of a comic posted a few months after Bailey’s casting, and that sentiment continues. A “Ginger Erasure chart” was posted by Ethan Van Sciver (infamous Comicsgate participator) just under a year ago, comparing comic book characters with their live-action counterparts. All but one of the 32 actors is Black—Julian Dennison, Deadpool 2’s Firefist, is of Māori descent. 

Gingercide-believers will claim that the “blackwashing” of their favorite redheads is some horrible way to erase an entire hair color of people from the media, but people with red hair are actually overrepresented on screen and in comics. The gingercide tirade also ignores that Black people can have red hair. Wigs and hair dye are easy solutions, not to mention Black people with naturally red hair like Erin Kellyman, Luna Steeples, and yours truly. They do not seem to care about Mary Jane Watson being played by a white, naturally blonde Kirsten Dunst, nor do they seem to realize that Iris West is not a redhead in the comics. The image that is regularly used to compare Patton to comic book Iris West has a warm-toned filter on it, and is a part of Geoff Johns’ and Francis Manupaul’s 2010 Flash run, where Iris consistently has brown hair.

Even if racism had no bearing here and hair color was truly important, Black actresses should not have to capitulate to the demands of the masses by wearing a wig or dying their hair. The reality of the matter is that these actresses face all of this racist harassment because Black women are systemically viewed and treated as subhuman. Black people as a whole have been subjugated for hundreds of years by way of slavery, human zoos, and general colonial violence, but the dehumanization that Black women face at the crossroads of racism and misogyny multiplies that violence. Patton dealt with death threats during her time on The Flash, but was never formally informed that Warner Bros. had a team to deal with violent messages and threats. She, like many other Black actresses, was told to stay off of social media after her casting was announced, but she has since noted that “there were no support systems,” and “[social media allowed] free range [for me] to get abused every day.” Until Grant Gustin hit back at her denigrators in 2019, the primary defensive line for Patton and her portrayal of Iris was herself and her fans. When The CW finally decided to speak up in 2020—6 years into The Flash’s run—it was not a shock that their statement was not taken in good faith. Support systems for actors are generally lacking, and this is another area where that is a blatant problem.

This deeply insidious racism does not only target Black actresses—and actors—who are perceived as “stealing” representation from redheads. When Leah Sava Jeffries was cast as Annabeth Chase in Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, there was immediate backlash to her not being white and blonde. It was argued that Annabeth’s hair color was important to the story because she subverted the “dumb blonde” trope and struggled with being underestimated, but that commentary is almost 20 years old. In that time, more people have come to realize that Black girls are treated that way as well, and hair color has no bearing on that. Jeffries was only 12 years old when her casting was announced, and was immediately met with the same cruelty that her adult peers have faced in the past, leading author and producer Rick Riordan to release a statement in her defense and has continued to make his position clear. He did what should be standard practice for situations like this. 

Denouncing racism and defending an actor you chose to hire is the bare minimum, and that should have been clear to Hollywood well before Candice Patton had racial slurs directed at her on Twitter. At the end of the day, a lot of people feel rage at seeing a Black woman where they believe a White woman should be because they do not see Black women as people. It is the racial empathy gap in action: white people who have never had to try and relate to a character that acts and looks nothing like them cannot handle being faced with a Black female protagonist or love interest on their screens. Despite hundreds of years of racism and misogyny trying to tell us otherwise, Black women are people and deserve to be treated as such, on screen and off. The sooner everyone gets a grip on that irrefutable truth, the better.

Kathryn Porter is a freelance writer who will talk endlessly about anything entertainment-related given the chance. You can find her @kaechops on Twitter.

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