White-Minority Racelifts: you really, really, really didn't (and shouldn't) have to

That's right. I'm going to make a whole series on Race Lifts. Because they're just that annoying.

I get it, Hollywood. You want a diverse cast to appeal to a wider demographic. And if you're adapting older material that has a rather homogeneous cast, a few edits can turn your movie from white guy paradise to affirmative action flick. But these changes are often offense to the minority you're trying to appeal to or disrespectful to the source material.

If your source material has a cast that is limited to one ethnic group, then keep it that way, even if that group remains all white. Isn't that the point of the ethnic group? Take the Percy Jackson and the Olympians movie series for example. Percy Jackson is a young adult fiction series based off of Greek mythology. As a result, most of the characters are white. However, the film adaptation of the first book, The Lightning Thief, changes two supporting roles from a white ethnicity (I'm using this liberally here as neither character is human and really has a 'race' other than Greek-inspired) to a black ethnicity. Satyr (half man, half goat) Grover Underwood, Percy's loyal but foolish guardian, is originally described as having "curly brown hair, brown eyes, small horns, caucasian skin, chin wispy beard and hairy brown goat legs," (source: Percy Jackson Wiki and my sister) but in the movie, he is portrayed by African America actor Brandon T. Jackson. Greek goddess Persephone, who has "pale skin, flowing, and curled black hair" also gets the token treatment with multiracial Rosario Dawson.

Is this racist? Not yet. But if you think about the characters our two black actors are portraying, then there are some implications. This Percy Jackson fan observes that the attempts at avoiding a racist, all-white cast only lead to being more racist. Grover is the protagonist's silly bodyguard who, despite being given the prestigious position of looking after Percy, often requires Percy to save him. In the movie, he becomes "always interested in the ladies, full of silly one-liners and the only main character that was half animal," unlike the other white characters, who are either human, demigod, or full Olympian god. This puts Grover in a sub-human role that does nothing but serve the other characters. Is this racist? Quite. Persephone, the other 'black' character (multiracial, actually, but still far less white than everyone else) is Hades's miserable captive in Hell. Hades is abusive and Persephone is desperate for visitors to free her from his company, going on a date with Grover. She is no better than a slave.

It should be noted that all other characters in the movie are white. There are no Asians or Hispanics in this movie. It's a world of white heroes and black lackeys. Is this racist? Quite. I highly doubt that the directors chose Jackson and Dawson for their superior acting ability. These race lifts were unnecessary and done on characters who would be unoffensive if they were kept white (as they are in both the books and the original mythology). If these casting decisions were an attempt to check a box or appeal to the black/minority (because I guess one minority fits all in terms of tokenism here), they failed.