Being racially colorblind doesn't mean being stupid.

One of my favorite animated series of the recent past was Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show was an exciting adventure, but it had this entire political and racial undercurrent that I thought taught everyone, not just kids, really important lessons without being preachy. In it, there are a bunch of different nations loosely based on real world locales - for example, the Water tribe was like the Inuit, while the Fire tribe was a lot like China, and the Air tribe seemed influenced by the people of Tibet. The show is much about political and racial intolerance.

Even more fascinating, almost all of the characters are portrayed as being from different ethnic backgrounds. The Water tribe is much darker than the others, for example. Which brings me to my issue -- a movie is being made, and we get this:



Two of the whitest people possible playing the darkest characters in the show -- a show about cultural suppression. Seriously - what were they thinking? However, it gets worse. These two white kids live in a tribe of Eskimos ... no, really - everyone BUT them has an ethnic background. Guess who else isn't white? Yeah, the bad guys ... so, villains and extras: dark skin -- heroes: white skin.

The movie may still be great -- but, I hate the message this is sending, especially when people of other than Caucasian ethnicity have such a problem getting roles in Hollywood -- they take a movie that is full of diversity and hand out the roles to white kids. It's irritating.

On towards my writing: I've had very slow work on my submission for the upcoming anthology. I've lost faith in the story, which almost always happens. It makes it very difficult to do the hard work of writing when you don't believe in what you're doing. I start to procrastinate.

I have decided that after this, I'll finish the rewrite of the ending to Shiloh's Way, possibly adapt the opening of Blackburn Burrow to a short story, then start on my crazy cross-genre epic. I don't even know what's going to happen in it. Exciting, no?

Last couple days on my poll! Please vote for which of the two names you think best suits an author!