Denial of a multicolored multiverse

[gryphonsegg]

So . . . I'm trying to find copies of the second and third books in the Hunger Games trilogy. Yes, they're in all the major bookstores now, but I can't buy new books, especially not new hardcover books, at the moment, and they haven't made it to the libraries in my town yet. Anyway, it turns out there's a Hunger Games fandom on the internet. And a large portion of it apparently does not realize that Rue and Thresh were black, even though that was pretty damn obvious in the book. "Dream casting" posts often include white actors in those roles, and at least some fans on Deviant Art draw Rue as a brown-haired white girl (just like Katara, am I right?). *facepalm* I know I shouldn't be surprised by this-- I mean, there are ATLA fans who thought the Water Tribe people were white and, before that, Harry Potter fans who thought Cho Chang and the Patil twins were white and even people who read Anansi Boys and thought the major characters were all white for most of their reading experience-- but I . . . I don't even know. I get that most of these fans are pretty young, but still, it's pretty disappointing to get such strong examples of how stubbornly persistent the white default is in spite of the fact that countries that used to be majority white are getting more and more multiracial.

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