shikamaru317 said:
I think so, but I don't think that was the case with Star Wars, as you can see from that movie poster. They used him prominently in western marketing because they wanted their token black character (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism), then hid him in the background in their China marketing because they were afraid he would hurt their sales there. I said mostly white because there may have been a few black Imperial characters in pre-Disney expanded universe works (books/games/etc.), I honestly don't remember, they may have been all white in expanded universe works as well. I'm fairly sure that every Imperial Officer we saw in the original trilogy was white by design, specifically because Lucas was basing the Empire on Nazi Germany. I'm not seeing any non-white Imperial characters in the screenshots I'm finding online, nor do I remember there being any. I guess you could make the argument that Imperials being white only applied to the officers, not the Stormtroopers, but since we never saw any Stormtroopers with their helmets off in the original trilogy, that's not a great argument for a black stormtrooper imo. Since Disney took over, we have not only seen Finn, a black stormtrooper, but also black imperial officers, such as Admiral Rae Sloane, who was recently featured in the trailer for the latest EA Star Wars game. I just don't remember there being any pre-Disney. |
An entirely or almost entirely white cast isn't too out of place for a 1970s American movie. Remember, just a decade or two before the US was at its all-time highest percentage of white people, and that was also the reality most people there had grown up with.
I've seen the Empire being retconned into being human supremacist (it can be easily argued that was the case because most aliens George Lucas could do in the 70s looked too ridiculous to be taken seriously as villains) but I've never heard anything about what you're saying being a thing. Also, the First Order isn't the Empire and uses enslaved, brainwashed children as soldiers, so yeah.
Either way, it's kind of pointless to be wasting time discussing an entirely fictional context like this where race isn't even a factor. Disney isn't anyone's friend and will seek to do whatever gets them more money. People would whine for their own reasons regardless of whether Finn was white, black or neon green.
