I believe the show Merlin here actually cast a black woman as... Guinevere, who i think was meant to be someone historically real. ( Arthur's lover, i think? ) Anyway, i remember noting my parents' reaction after they'd seen the show. "How can they cast a black woman as Lady Guinevere! She was historically white" and even "Black people weren't even around at the time of Arthurian legends". I didn't understand why they were so up in arms. After all, i doubt they had make-up or American Crew hair gel either, but the actors are still all sporting it anyway. I thought she did an apt job of filling the role and didn't really get why her race was such a big issue. Where it might be an issue is if the thing they're portraying claims to be a factual portrayal. "This IS how this character would have looked back when they were alive", like in the Thor movie, if they claimed that the Heimdall they choose to portray would look like the exact Heimdall that people used to worship and speak of in legend. I take it as the director's choice of portrayal rather than factual representation. If they want to choose to portray Merlin as a weedy teenager, they can. If they want to choose to portray Heimdall as black, they can. It's entirely up to the director how they interpret the source material they're given and how they want to portray it and inject their own vision into it.
That said, regarding the whole "black people were slaves and we should allow double standards because of it" needs to be put to bed. We can't keep bringing that issue up forever and i think people have or are rapidly getting to the stage where we really don't need to keep bringing it up because racism isn't really tolerated publically anymore. You will still get racists, of course, but from what i see they mostly keep themselves to themselves. Should we start giving casting privaleges to women and homosexuals too? They were oppressed as well, after all. How about Japanese? Or Russians? You know, to make up for the McCarthyism period.
My point is that the world has put its nasty past behind us and we should accept that. We don't pick on Germany for starting two world wars, even though the last one ended only 66 years ago and we shouldn't be apologetic because slavery ended 146 years ago. I suppose you are right though, ideal world and all that. Until Hollywood drops its Caucasian-centric preferential treatment there isn't really any wiggle-room. I have to ask though, is it purely this Caucasian centricism, or is there a genuine lack of good actors of an ethnic minority? For example, is there one good black / asian / other minority actor for every ten white actors purely because ethnic minorities don't often choose to try and get into Hollywood? It'd be really good to see some actual figures and sort of 'survey data' on this to see.
