During a "white-washing" wankstorm on the Legend of Korra tag on Tumblr, somebody said that Avatar is a world without white people and the pale characters are based on...Tibetans? I'm a bad fan and can't remember.

But it's been niggling away at me ever since.

The world of Avatar is a world without Europeans. That is a deliberate intention of the creators, since so much of the fantasy in America is European-based.

That doesn't make it a world without white people. At this point in our society, it's impossible to create a fictional world without whiteness.

"White" isn't a race, or a nationality, or even a single specific culture. It is a byproduct of Western imperialism, but it is not synonymous with "European." "White" is an idea, an arbitrary standard by which society awards people privilege. "White" is a matter of degree. People of color with paler skin are afforded more privilege than people with darker skin.

Works of art do not exist in a vacuum. We are taught from a very young age - implicitly and far too often explicitly - to judge people by the color of their skin. These lessons are deeply ingrained into our psyches, and they don't go away just because a character is from a fictional race.


The world of Avatar is full of white people. Not European people, but white people just the same. And while whiteness may have no significance to the characters, since they exist in a world without European colonization, it still has significance to the viewer.


Which is why this bothers the hell out of me.


While there are only two episodes of Legend of Korra released so far, I've seen enough spoilers to have a fair sense of what the characters in season 1 look like.

Very few of them are brown. There's Korra. Katara, except I really don't think we're going to see much of her since she didn't move back to Republic City with Korra (my question: why? What's left for her in the South Pole? Her son, her grandchildren, her husband's legacy and her protegee are all in Republic City.).

Tenzin is pale. Pema is pale, and all of their children are pale. Mako and Bolin are pale. Lin Bei Fong is pale. Asami Sato and Tahno, who have not shown up yet but who are evidently going to be major characters, are both pale. Everyone from the Order of the White Lotus that we've seen so far is pale. All the Metalbending police we've seen are pale. Sparkly Sparkly Bush Man is pale. There's a whole lot of pale people. No Europeans, but a metric fuckton of pale people.


And now there's Tarrlok. I have no idea how big a character he's going to be, but he is one of the few brown-skinned characters in the series, and he is set up to be an antagonist to Tenzin, a major character. Tumblr fandom is already loving to hate him.

I mean, it's not Tarrlok being an antagonist/possible villain or Tumblr hating him that I have a problem with. It's ludicrous and counterproductive to demand that all people of color be portrayed as heroes; a different kind of dehumanizing. Tarrlok's sudden presence just kind of coalesced what I've been chewing on and struggling with.

The problem isn't with portrayal. The problem is with numbers. ambyr posted a great essay on the gender imbalance in Avatar: The Last Airbender. In terms of recurring characters, yes, we have a fabulous host of ladies who are badass in a wide variety of ways, which is awesome. But if you look at the background details, it's a world dominated by men.

The devil's in the details.

Which is not to say Legend of Korra fails as a progressive, boundary-breaking work of art. Having a lady of color in the role of protagonist and action hero is pretty transgressive for our current culture. Having a fantasy world without any European influence is, in mainstream America, extremely rare. The care and the effort the Avatar team puts into cultural sensitivity should be standard but is extraordinary. The Avatar team is doing amazing, wonderful, important work.

I guess more than anything else, it's a reminder of how deeply embedded racism is in the American psyche. It doesn't matter how progressive you are; you're not immune.

I've depressed myself with this. Time for some Jay Smooth.