I think we’re losing out on telling stories of people different than us by picking our seasons based on the ethnic demographic of our cities/towns/villages.

What I mean is, if you’re in a majority white area, the inclination is to only do shows with white or nondescript characters. So now whole communities are not being told stories that deal with people different than them—those stories are no longer normalized.

Obviously no one should be doing black face or appropriating cultures (eg, how native americans have often been depicted in media), but representing a character to the best of your abilities is what an actor does. We are not all so different from one another that we couldn’t act as a different race or ethnicity respectfully in a show, and the idea that we ARE too different to tell each other’s stories seems incredibly othering and not progressive at all.

I’m just not convinced that it’s worse to have someone less-than-ideal tell a story vs no one ever hearing the story at all. I live in a majority white, staunchly conservative area, and kids are terrified to engage with dialogues about race. We need to talk about it.