People who think diversity is more forced than the usual are just seeing what happens when certain groups are no longer seen as a default in moves. A cast of straight white males are also just as much pandering and forced as a cast of diverse characters and is also done to capture a certain audience. We are simply in a world where that is no longer the case. Think about TV, a channel that is advertising to white people will have shows that white people want to watch, so the casts will be white in a percived move to make them more comfortable. Then someone who grew up with all their shows being white will just see it as normal and think diversity is forced. Let's stop this forced racial quotas in all white tv shows amirite?
As for "let's stop changing straight white male characters" it's not equivalent at al. Changing Lara Croft into a man is changing one of a relatively small number of female characters into a male. Making Spiderman black still leaves you with ten gorillion white superheroes and is comparitvely not a big deal. Not to mention, in the hundreds of years of media before now, 95% of the people were white because it was seen as the default. In a world that is more diverse, going back to these older properties, that's obviously gonna change as our sensibilities are different.
The problem is that people are looking at the world in some idealistic way where things are already equal and none of this is necessary because representation was and is never a problem and everyone was already treated equally, which is not the case. And even then, until we live in a post discrimination world, some of the diversity is gonna be forced. And really, who gives a shit if it is, to be honest. That doesnt really spea to the quality of the work or employee or actor at all.
Also several parts of the debate are a weak attempt to have your cake and eat it too, basically its "I want the creators to choose the best person for the job, but if the creators choose a minority then that's a problem because obviously it was forced"
This isnt directed at anyone specifically. But basically I disagree on every point.
