Race affects you--why The Last Airbender was important

[kissmyassterisk]

A friend of mine posted that the recent Hollywood blunder, The Last Airbender, renewed their interest in social politics. A friend of theirs commented that they disagreed: they didn't believe that the casting of TLA could actually be seen as racist. It got bad fast, but I came in a couple hours later and added this

Comments

[aliaras]

I think part of oppressed groups turning around and oppressing their own members is just sheer self-preservation. The only obvious way out from a place where you're considered second-class is to pretend that it's not an unfair prejudice about some inherent quality of yours, but rather, that it's the behaviors a lot of people have, and you're not like that. Which is then possibly reinforced by members of the dominant class giving you "you're good for a" cookies. The whole "credit to your race" business. It took me a while to realize that people saying I was one of the boys weren't complimenting me (unless I was presenting as male).

I don't know how that ties in to AtLA, other than that being "overly PC/sensitive" is a criticism that's thrown at a lot of people working against oppression, and so not fighting means not being that which means more privilege cookies for you.