Black America’s Anime Love Cuts Down Race Swapping Argument

Great storytelling transcends skin color by tapping into universal human wants, struggles, and triumphs.

This is an opinion I get a lot of hate for, but I think race swapping is bad and weird.

Race swapping happens when a character of one race in a story is recast as another, usually swapping white characters for racial minorities. I say “usually,” but I might as well say “always,” since I can’t think of a single modern example going the other way.

A recent of example of the practice came with the news that black actor Paapa Essiedu has potentially been tapped to play Hogwarts’ surly potions master Severus Snape in HBO’s forthcoming Harry Potter series. I have no problems with Essiedu as an actor, though I must admit I haven’t seen him in much.

Regardless, the change is part of a larger pattern of simply casting a minority actor in a role where the character is not and that in the name of diversity and representation, it’s okay to change elements of a character like their race or sexuality to include more minorities.

The argument goes that minority boys and girls can’t see themselves in the white characters on screen and therefore need someone that looks like them to relate. Even if that means swapping characteristics of pre-existing characters.

I’ve heard it before from many well-meaning people on both the right and left.

But this argument collapses when you look at black America’s love for Japanese anime and manga. Huge black cultural icons like Kanye West and Michael B. Jordan openly adore it and its influence shines in their work. West’s hit song Stronger took heavy inspiration from Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 anime classic Akira.

And during an IGN interview, Jordan admitted that many of the fight scenes in Creed III were straight from the anime of his childhood.

"I really wanted to put my spin on it, you know?” Jordan said, “How to make these fights different, and you know, from Hajime no Ippo, to Megalo Box, to Naruto, to My Hero Academia, all of those different anime that I watched growing up, there's an inherent spirit to them in how they fight..."

It’s clear that these men have a deep love for the Japanese cartoons of their youth. They’ve incorporated it into their work and talk openly about how important it was for them growing up.

There aren’t a whole lot of black people in anime, especially not the older anime that West and Jordan drew such profound inspiration from. And yet the obsession thrives.

Some have tried to argue that black people resonate with stories of struggle or oppression and that is why certain anime is more popular amongst black crowds.

An article from Study Breaks asserted that “Since the first black slaves were brought to British America in 1619, African Americans have been treated as second-class citizens in their own country, so stories about underdogs fighting the status quo and winning when the odds are stacked against them resonate with black audiences.”

The explanation for why black people like anime is much simpler than a convoluted connection to slavery. Black people, same as white people, like anime because it’s cool.

As Jordan explained in his interview, the fights are cool, the heroes are cool, the stories and plots and adventures the characters go on are cool. It’s not about what the characters look like; it’s about the action and stories on screen.

When Goku trains to defeat Vegeta, kids think, “Wow, I want to get stronger too!” And then they cheer when he pummels the villain of the week into the ground.

That universal desire to improve and achieve draws people in—not the character’s skin color. Viewers don’t need characters to look like them; they just need them to be interesting. That’s all it takes.

The love affair between black culture and anime cuts through the race swapping debate like a katana through butter. Black anime fans, like fans everywhere, don’t need Goku to be black to cheer for him; they need Goku to be Goku.

Hollywood and the left’s obsession with crafting "relatable" representation by changing a character’s race misses the point entirely. Great storytelling transcends skin color by tapping into universal human wants, struggles, and triumphs.

Instead of repainting old characters, maybe try creating something original.

Who am I kidding, they’ll just make Snape black.