Race swapping and whitewashing

[Mnementh]

Ah, complex topic.

First of all, race swapping (white washing is one form of it) is often criticized under the broader view, that good IPs should not be changed in their core. If the skin color touches that core is up for debate, but it often is. And for the ones claiming that old IPs need fresh blood and to be changed: why not make a new IP to begin with and throw away the shackles of the old. You can copy pretty much everything, only change the names and what you wanted to change.

But there are qualifiers, and a lot of them. If an IP has fallen out of the public consciousness or never entered it in our part of the world, then you can change a lot without much fan backlash. When Tarantino made Django black I think barely anyone complained. I complained because the movie is mediocre (except the perfomance of Waltz, who is exceptional), but not because of the skin color of Django.

What is with adaptations from different cultures. Journey to the West is probably the most well known novel of all time (you may have heard of Dragonball or Monkey King) and it was adapted in different countries. Seeing the characters not as chinese is weird - but nothing really that breaks the immersion.

"I'm not a huge LotR guy, but from what I gather, in Tolkien's lore the different groups of people are very homogeneous (makes sense for a fantasy setting with limited means of transportation), but there are vast regions populated by non-white races. Why not write the show so that one of the main storyline strands takes place in one or more of these regions, and/or focusing on characters from those other races? Same with Wheel of Time - the little isolated backwater village at the start is so diverse that it made me chuckle."
In "The dragon prince" the elves are racial homogen, while the humans are very diverse. But there is a good reason for that: the history is, that humans were banned from the lands andf had all to move to new regions. That got them all mixed upo and they had to restart their civilizations.

Generally I would recommend making a new IP, but there is also another trick. I think MIles Morales is a great way to increase diversity, while retaining the core of the IP. Miles Morales does not replace Peter Parker, but they coexist. That is a nice trick.

Also, as a last comment: Akira Kurosawa adapted a lot of Shakespeare (under different names though). He casted japanese actors, so that is one very early raceswap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwP_kXyd-Rw