As far as I'm concerned, creators should do whatever they want, within the confines of any contracts they may have with creators of source material. Hire white chicks to play black, male superheros. Cast anyone for anything. I really DGAF about any of that. I just like to see good movies and shows. To that end, I want the people making those movies and show to have the freedom to make good stuff. They're a lot better at it than I am, so I ain't gonna tell them what to do. I certainly don't think this calls for a "consistent set of rules".

The thing is though even if it would make sense for a certain group of people in a comedy scenario to be all of one ethnicity that is seen as a scenario being white washed even though the reality of it is that not every group of black friends has a white and Asian mate and the same way every group of white people do not have token ethnicity's scattered in to tick boxes Sitcoms from the 90s for example had a group of 6 friends... the entire cast was.... yup monochromatic with one slight dash of Italian in there

6 people, 1.5 ethnicity's

201x sitcom cast shot

6 people, 4 ethnicity's

Just a random example but hopefully you get what I mean, I would think a casting director would now be weighing in an addition pro/con as they go through auditions simply on a basis of "we already have one of your colour / gender" it's a shame really when positive discrimination is used to make racism sound like anything other than what it is, discrimination, it's never positive, Ever.

Edit - The Good Place (The picture which isn't Friends) is probably one of the best dark comedies I've seen in years, if you've not seen it, I can't recommend it enough but do not read up about it just check out the first episode or two on netflix, all 3 seasons are on there and yeah.... fantastic! but don't google it, spoilers galore since it's going into Season 4!

What examples are there where it only makes sense to have white people in a sitcom? And i'm not talking about ones where some random city has a 1:230 minority population, I mean one's where it makes sense thematically? There's not a lot that's exactly unique to that experience and that's been done a thousand times before. Notice too that you start off your argument talking purely about comedies that make sense with having one ethnicity, which is a very general sentiment that can be shared among all groups, yet quickly change to talking about whites specifically. Is that because sitcoms that predominantly feature one ethnicity in there cast are actually pretty popular right now? With Blacked and Straight Off The Boat? 

What you are describing here is not really "discrimination", it's artistic freedom. And this is why the idea of giving an inch and taking a mile works both for sides. You simultaneously highlight how shows which are freshly created are somehow considered "whitewash" just for featuring an all white cast, but then mention how it's "positive discrimination" or "racism" if a production team makes a show and envisions specific races in each role. Those two statements contradict each other, because both highlight the  artistic values at play (having an all white-cast and having a multi-racial cast) that can easily be discredited as racist or white-washing in some way. You can try to justify it as the white cast being "more realistic", but that doesn't really change the ends. And no, just because a decision is made by a casting director, does not mean the decision should be discredited. I doubt you'd be saying the same thing if a writer of a book created characters with specific ethnicity, because to do so would be to put into question artistic expression as a whole. Well ... in a TV production, or movie production, or game production ... multiple individuals make the decisions, because it's not realistic for one persons vision to carry the creation of an entire show. 

Whitewashing needs to stop first its a much bigger problem and has been going on for much longer.

If race matters to the story or character, then obviously cast to that race. Other than that, who cares? Cast the best actors/actresses for the roles, irrespective of race.

fuck my life jump straight onto the fact that I picked a white sitcom as an example,

Here's a 90s sitcom family

7:0

early 00s

5:1

Spin off of the same series started in 2017

3:3

Like I said, not every group of a certain colour naturally has friends of the contrasting colour, it has gotten to the point where strictly one ethnicity shows such as the way fresh prince was made are becoming rarer and rarer, which is a shame because lots of shows now especially aimed at the teenage audience give off the image of everyone gets along and everyone is treated the same because we're all the same... Fresh Prince didn't do that at all, there is a fantastic episode I still recall 20+ years since it aired where Will was driving one of the familys cars and got pulled over by a white cop, Black teen, really rich fancy car, arrest for suspected GTA, it's a damn powerful message which is spat through gritted teeth at the cop when confronted by Uncle Phil (RIP James Avery) when he directly tells him that situation should never have happened had Will been white and not to BS about it being any other way.

Missing the after scene after but Carlton is under the innocent impression that stuff went by the book but here's the Script from imdb if you care, like I said... for a silly sitcom from the 90s it was pretty heavy hitting.

Phil and Carlton in House downstairs

goalpost changing at best tbqh, especially considering I gave two popular examples of shows that are almost entirely one ethnicity. By the way, you KNOW that the definition of predominantly does not mean exclusively, right? Your own example was of a cast that had "1 and a half ethnicities", so I don't see the problem of mentioning a show who's entire main cast is all Asian except one example. I can also think of quite a few shows I didn't mention, like The Goldbergs or the Middle, which are almost entirely white. 

The change from shows being targeted to one group, to now being targeted to multiple groups, is not inherently a bad thing, and using high quality art from a specific era in time does not disprove this. All it says is that the art is very good. There are tons of shows that are more or less specifically targeted towards one group, I just listed two of them earlier. It's just not as common now because society accepts peoples differences more, and so it's more normalized to show people of various ethnicities in the same program. You say that it's a shame that people are living in this fairy tale land where every white person has a black friend because ... television has multi-racial casts. But the question is, why? You're looking at this from a thematic perspective of the television scenario being some kind of over the top whimsical lie ... but television casts  are almost always made to address the most common traits of average citizens in a society. And from that perspective, racism is not exactly representative of the "average" citizen, you're not going to find a lot of shows where the justification for there being no black characters is "well, there's got to be at least one group of 6 people in America who hate the blacks! Let's make a show about them", especially because race is not even an important theme in most of these kinds of programs. This takes away a justification for this "fairy tale land" argument of yours. The only other justification you could make is that statistically, most of these shows should have an all-one-ethnicity cast based on data from the real world, because certain ethnicites are more represented in certain areas, but this is a stretch at best. It's a dumb justification for a television show and shouldn't have bearing on the casting.

This whole idea that just because " not every group of a certain colour naturally has friends of the contrasting colour" there shouldn't be as many shows as there are now with a multi-racial cast, seems misguided at best. The reason why Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was almost entirely about black people wasn't because in real life there are black people who only have black friends. It wasn't about that. It was because the black community was a niche that was not being fully represented on television, and a network program decided to satisfy that niche. It was a black show for black people with a black cast, but it wasn't because of statistics or the likelyhood of a black family having white friends. It was because certain themes and communities weren't being represented on Television that needed that representation. The only difference is that now, a lot of shows which have multi-racial casts DO touch on these topics. A lot of shows DO have minorities. These topics  and ethnicities are much more spread thin rather than being concentrated into one program. It's the same reason why shows like Fat Albert aren't necessary ... they might be great shows, but we're not really living in a mentally segregated society anymore, at least not to the same capacity we used to. 

I agree with wanting to stop race bending characters but I would like if people would stop attacking the actors themselves. It's down right disgusting.

Doesn't really matter to me at all. Of course, I prefer to look at it on a character to character basis.

For example: Marvel's Wolverine: A short white dude supposably. So they cast Hugh Jackman, a tall actor, which is fine as it is easy to manipulate and he is great.
Let's say instead they cast Aisha Tyler to be Wolverine, now that would be ridiculous.
Or they cast a non Japanese as Yukio, seems like a bad idea.

Now remakes are pretty fair game in my book, even though USA has plenty of Japanese Americans to fulfill the role in Ghost in the Shell. The producers still want to make a profit and hiring a A lister is their best bet. When the Japanese film industry remakes Hollywood movies, they definitely do not hire the plentiful white dudes willing to take the role, they hire a Japanese A lister

BTW, I couldn't vote in the poll, because it presents a false dichotomy. I'd have liked to vote No, but not for the reason attached to that option in the poll.