I borrowed this PSA poster--yes, let's say borrowed, I am definitely one day going to return to that university and replace that poster--from a bathroom stall at a university, because I think it is a poetic bit of propaganda. It allows for a fair depth of deconstruction, which I like in an image. Before reading on, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the ideas of literary and film criticism, particularly the concept of a "reading" of a text. I don't want to have to delete a bunch of comments going "you're wrong because that's not what the creators meant" like I did when I said Disney's The Little Mermaid was about interracial relationships.
So: what are our elements? Black hand, money, white hand, disease. I say that this will extend to metaphors about black people, white people, commerce, and all varieties of malady. So: White imperialists come to black nations with the promise of enriching commerce, but instead blight them with poverty and disease. Or a corruption affects all commerce, poisoning black and white alike. Or the green bugs are not pathologies, but the "germ" of new life, created by the flow of currency. Or money is germy. Or black people are germy. Note that this last (and maybe the first if we're being picky) is racist. Indeed, there are several racist readings of the text of this image, even without getting into the positioning with respect to the viewer and who is accepting what and so on.
Let us consider two hypothetical images like this, one with two black hands, and one with two white hands. Because race, like most human categories, has a marked and an unmarked (or default) status, only one will appear to the casual observer (particularly a casual observer from a default category) to be dealing directly with race. This problem is a Known Issue with race. What are some of the proposed solutions (i.e. ways to avoid being called racist while portraying non-whites in media) and what are the possible drawbacks to each one?
• Always ignore race
Maybe a noble thought, but the problem is that people can't actually do this. Largely it boils down to ignoring the fact that everyone in your portrayal is white due to the consequences of some unstated assumptions.
• Harp on race constantly
Annoying and exhausting for anti-racists, racists, and people who feel that not much caring puts them more in the former group than the latter. Leads to films like Crash.
• Be black
Wait, hear me out. In media contexts, people from marginalized groups tend to be granted more latitude to express opinions only on the matter of their specific group's relation to the mainstream, on the grounds that people from marked categories are likelier to be expert on these subjects than people from default categories. More comprehensibly, on tv, black people get to talk shit about black and white people and no one except racists or academics or racist academics will really take exception. Of course, there is a firmly-established political culture dedicated to catering to upset racists, so this is still a bit dicey. Other possible drawbacks: society won't just let you become black for some bullshit reason. And, I don't know if this is true, but I heard somewhere that there are disadvantages to being black in America that outweigh the notional pleasure of knowing that you could still potentially be on tv if you use the word "nigger" extensively.
• Tokenism/Diversity Checklist casting
Regardless of their level of racial savvy, pretty much everyone can tell if you're doing this. The impulses that drive this style of character creation (a bid for universal appeal) usually also preclude fully humanizing any characters, and because the desire to have "one of each kind" of cast member need not spring from any actual political awareness, it's easy for it to be accompanied by a bunch of racial stereotypes or for Ma-Ti to not really have any good powers.
• Use only white people
Don't...don't actually do this, as a strategy or otherwise. Besides being patently inhumane, people do eventually notice, and then you either have to justify it (questionable) or change (difficult).
• Stop depicting humans
This can backfire pretty easily. Certain suites of characteristics you might wish to portray with a non-human character, George Lucas, are already associated with poisonous racial stereotypes and whether or not you meant them that way everyone will assume the worst. Also, people generally need to be involved at some stage, whether in voice, character design, general aesthetic, writing, or premise, and any of these people can have unexamined racial biases or ignorance that make their way into the final product.
• Alien casting method
Maybe you know the story, but the scriptwriters for Alien supposedly specified that all the characters were "unisex", and encouraged the casting of actors of whatever gender to play any of them, except Ripley, who was definitely going to be a dude. While a favored technique of mine, this can only work in situations where race and gender are genuinely interchangeable, and as such is limited in its capacity to tell stories in which these are meaningful dynamics.
• God, this is tricky. What would Solomon do?
Oh goddamit it Solomon.
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