Another example of public reaction to having actors play other races is (are?) the Charlie Chan movies. Even though Charlie was clearly supposed to be more intelligent than anyone else, and the other Oriental characters were at least as intelligent as the White Men (with the comic-relief exception of No. 1 Son), the movies came across as extremely racist.
I remember decades ago hearing that Disneyland had a problem about blatant prejudice among the swans in the moat around Cinderella's castle. The white swans and the black swans hated and were always attacking each other. I think that the company solved the problem by getting rid of the less popular black swans. There were some mutters that Disney should force the swans to integrate, but nobody could suggest how. The company pointed out that trying to force the swans to integrate would just result in very obvious vicious swan battles.
Another example of public reaction to having actors play other races is (are?) the Charlie Chan movies. Even though Charlie was clearly supposed to be more intelligent than anyone else, and the other Oriental characters were at least as intelligent as the White Men (with the comic-relief exception of No. 1 Son), the movies came across as extremely racist.
I remember decades ago hearing that Disneyland had a problem about blatant prejudice among the swans in the moat around Cinderella's castle. The white swans and the black swans hated and were always attacking each other. I think that the company solved the problem by getting rid of the less popular black swans. There were some mutters that Disney should force the swans to integrate, but nobody could suggest how. The company pointed out that trying to force the swans to integrate would just result in very obvious vicious swan battles.
Fred Patten