Avatar the last Air Bender the Movie

For the first episode of Race Wars I want to congratulate the great minds at Paramount. Paramount in a brilliant move that will forever resound across time and space decided that for ,a movie set in a story themed around martial arts and Asian culture ,to cast nothing but white people in the leading roles; truly astounding bravado. Don’t get me wrong it takes a lot of nerve to cast nothing but white people in a movie where there’s no indication of what the characters race should be. But it takes a special pair of iron testicles to take a show where every evidence pointed to an all Asian cast and then have only whites play the heroes and have Asians, of course, be the villains.

The only people who seam to be able to beat paramount in being beacons of racial tolerance though are the pro-casters. Apparently the characters don’t look Asian to them ,which makes sense. Where are their buck teeth? What about the coke bottle glasses? If any group of people have an accurate understanding of how Asians should look like its American whites after all:

Whereas, we all know what Caucasians normally look like:

What Caucasian doesn’t have eyes that make up ¾ of their face?

Abandoning sarcasm for a moment the problem here is not so much about how “Asian” the characters of Avatar look, but what in psychology is called in-group out-group mentality. According to in-group out-group mentality people perceive their own group as being comprised of unique individuals whereas outside groups are uniformly the same. It is not a coincidence that one of the most pervasive stereotypes about Asians is that they “All look the same”. While Caucasians can be perceived as being able to have any feature no matter how improbable or illogical they are. Even when that goes so far as being heroes in a fantasy world that is entirely derived from Asian Cultures. It makes since to them because Caucasians can be like Asians, but Asians could never be like Caucasians. Thus Asians are regulated to having only “slit eyes” and “yellow skin”.

This brings back the question do the anime inspired characters of Avatar: The last Air Bender look white? Considering even the most tanned Caucasian lacks the brown skin tone of Sokka and Katara:

I think we can safely discount them from being “white”. But what about Aang his skin is white!

But what about Aang his skin is “white” he has to be Caucasion!

Lets look at some actual North East Asians for a minute:

Hmmm, their skin is even paler than Aangs. There goes white skin = Caucasian.

But what about his eyes their big and round we all know Asians most distinct feature are their "slit eyes"?

Hmmm, Really lets take a moment to examine the difference between Asian features and Caucasian features.

Here is the face of a Asian man. If you notice his eyes aren’t “slits” yet he still looks Asian. So then what’s the difference? What makes his face different from any white persons face? Notice his eyebrows? Notice how high they are positioned? Lets move them down a little.

I didn’t change anything but the position of the eyebrows and all ready he appears more Caucasian than before. Now lets make another change the depth of his eyes.

Asians lack brow ridges have fuller eyelids. Caucasians have prominent brow ridges and sunken eyes. By adding brow ridges and sinking in the eyes I end up turning an Asian face into a Caucasian face. Now lets go back to Aang.

Are his eyebrows located near the eye? Does he have brow ridges. Is his eyes even remotely sunken in. No. Its clear after viewing the fundamental differences of a Caucasian face to an Asian face that Aang is Asian not Caucasian.