Views from the Reading Room

Today's topic is whitewashing ... and a positive response.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a cartoon in which the various human characters are all from societies based on Asian and Inuit cultures. Late last year, the casting was announced for a live-action movie "The Last Airbender", with all four leads played by white people. Later it was changed so that the "villain" is to be played by Dev Patel. This is not an improvement.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words: racebending.com has photos that make the point instantly.
The fannish response can be found at aang_aint_white and in the racebending community on LJ.

Justine Larbalestier's recent book Liar is about a black teenager with natural (kinky) hair. The cover for the forthcoming US edition shows a white girl with straight hair. I first read about this some time last week; here it is discussed by Alaya Dawn Johnson on the angryblackwoman blog.

I've seen several other posts about each of these things recently (in and out of the IBARW feed). They are not two single incidents, but examples of a sustained practice in Hollywood and in publishing.

In Proposal: Open Source Book Re-Covery Project, coffeeandink suggests a project to create a library of alternative covers for whitewashed books and other media. Lots of people have offered support already, including web space, software skills and artwork. What a brilliant idea! The project will also take suggestions of books that need re-covering.

This week is the fourth annual International Blog Against Racism Week, and this time I have a journal. I'm not qualified to post anything substantive, but here are some links:
the IBARW community on Livejournal
the roundup posts, which will accumulate all the submitted entries

and, in no particular order, some links from yesterday:
Daddy, don't you know that everything moves in cycles? in which yeloson calls for PoC voices to be heard
Ok, that's it. I'm done. in which Dhobi Ki Kutti loses patience with misrepresentation on TV
IBARW, Carl Brandon's Open Letter, and the cost of anger in which Nora writes about the interaction between racism, activism, and her writing career
Internalized racism (the silent face of bigotry) by karnythia

The plan is to post some more links tomorrow, but you know what happens to plans.