Why New Characters Don’t Solve the Problem of Diverse Representation
First off, as much as Spider-Man and James Bond and most white characters have no connection to a “white culture”, almost every character of color’s ethnicity is an important part of their identity—in part because so many of them were created as a challenge to an overwhelmingly white cultural landscape. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created Black Panther as a conscientious effort to add diversity to the Marvel Universe. (It’s not a coincidence that he’s introduced two issues after Wyatt Wingfoot, the Human Torch’s Native American roommate.) Therefore, Kirby and Lee made a character who is the king of an insular African nation, someone who could not be anything other than African.
Secondly, minorities have been and still are shut out from wide representation, and there are so few roles, and even fewer starring roles, for actors of color in Hollywood that it dramatically reduces representation every time a role that could have been played by a POC is given to a white actor. As I said before, lack of representation is symbolic annihilation. So even if an Asian character could arguably be played by a white actress (*cough ScarJo cough*), it does literal harm—both emotionally and in a practical financial and professional sense—to whitewash these characters, costing actors of color a job and robbing audiences of color of a chance to identify with the heroes presented.