[stavros]

I don't know about what Americans think, but, as a Greek, the whole "whiteness" thing is an American social construct. There aren't whites and blacks in Greece, mostly because we don't have enough black people here to have a divide.

As far as I'm concerned, all your casting is wrong, it's not like Brad Pitt in Troy looks anything like a Greek person. Casting black people goes even farther, but it's just a matter of degree.

It does make sense, these are American movies, they're going to cast Americans, and the whole race issue is about who gets to star in them. There aren't enough Greek people in Hollywood to make a fuss about representation, so they don't get representation. It is what it is, but let's not pretend it's about accuracy or faithfulness to the original material, it's just about less racially biased casting.

[anang]

Yes, people that get upset about racially “incorrect” casting hand wave away casting someone of Irish decent as Greek because it falls into some sort of western bucket.

So when someone complains about a black person being cast as Greek, in a movie filled with people of English, Irish, Scandinavian and who knows else decent, what they’re actually saying is that black people will never have a right to the shared western culture.