What's Behind the Modern Obsession With Race Swapping?

You’ve seen it happen so many times you probably can’t remember every single instance of it, but race swapping in Hollywood is more than just a trend, it seems like an obsession.

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For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, the latest victim of a Hollywood race-swapping is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ red-haired heroine, reporter April O’Neil. Now, instead of the fit, yellow-bedecked red-head, we now have an April made for “modern audiences.”

(READ: The Lie of the “Modern Audience”)

It’s the umpteen-thousandth example of a white character being transformed into a black one to reflect the writer’s politics, and for some reason, modern politics seems to have it out for people with red hair.

As you can see, the latest version of April is a pudgy black woman in the new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” movie out this year.

The given excuse for this is the need for “more representation” but given the fact that non-white people on a television screen have been pretty normal for decades, there has to be something more there. I never met, or heard of anyone who watched “Family Matters” that wished the Winslows were white. I don’t know anyone who watched a Richard Pryor stand-up special and wished his jokes came out of the mouth of George Carlin. Even if you did provide me examples, it wouldn’t be enough to compare to the love and adoration America had for these black celebrities.

“But people need to see themselves in a character.”

No, they don’t and it’s a shallow person that does. Blade being black never decreased my appreciation for his vampire slaying, nor did it deter me from creating my own heroes based on his powers when I was young. Spawn was a black superhero that I thought was so cool I would fantasize about having powers like his. During my childhood, my black or Hispanic friends on the playground had no trouble declaring they were Jason, the white-skinned Red Ranger from the Power Rangers franchise when we were pretending to be both mighty and morphin’.

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The skin matters little, the point is the relatability and attractiveness of the character. So, no matter how you slice it, the “representation” angle is ridiculous.

The race-swapping gets even more ridiculous when you consider the width and breadth of the human imagination. Why not create new stories with new characters that are non-white? It’s not that hard. I’ll do it right now.

Ademar Zabala is an immigrant from El Salvador who brought his family to the United States after a major corporation recognized his achievements in the scientific study of the properties of light. While working on an experiment with giving photons mass, a mistake in the program lead to an overheating machine that exploded and somehow mutated Ademar’s body into a being that can create and manipulate light. He can not only focus light to create intense heat, but he can also bend it to create illusions or become invisible, and even teleport short distances at the speed of light. These powers come at a cost, however. Ademar must find ways to return mass to his body lest the light he’s been infused with consumes his body and he becomes immaterial. This is done by deadening the light within him when not in use and using chemicals and mechanical processes to strengthen his material body. Staying in the dark slows down this process, but it speeds up when using his powers. His powers allow him to help a lot of people, but he sees them as a curse that puts a time limit on his life as a human and a barrier between him and his family. His is a struggle of maintaining his humanity as the power of a god threatens to consume him. What he’ll become when that finally happens is anyone’s guess, but judging by how Ademar feels when he uses his powers, he’s not confident it will be good.

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Boom. I just created a non-white superhero with powers, flaws, and enemies both without and within. It wasn’t even that hard, and if someone wants to give me the funding, I’ll write an entire comic book series around this character and create more characters in the process.

There are no boundaries to the human imagination and what it can accomplish, yet these writers and showrunners make it seem like there are no ideas left, so they’re forced to put new spins on old ideas. This, in itself, is a lie. Not only is it a lie, but it’s also an insult to the race by which a white character has been swapped. This was best put by Eric July, a comic creator with fresh ideas himself, who noted these race-swaps are simply “sloppy seconds” and “hand-me-down” characters.

“White folks saying ‘we already developed this character for decades, merchandise is out there, generations of people have grown up understanding who this character was…now we can pass this character to you even though everybody knows the original ain’t you,” said July.

So what is it that really drives these race swaps? After watching and listening to these Hollywood writers and showrunners for long enough, the answer seems pretty simple.

It’s spite.

As I’ve covered previously, we know that the media is incredibly racist, but it doesn’t just stop at the news media. This racism extends well into the entertainment sector. When race swaps aren’t being packed with false nobility, showrunners aren’t exactly hiding their disdain for the audience they’re preaching to.

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She-Hulk, for instance, saw the head writer claim she wrote the series partly as a “f*** you” to the people she knows would get mad at the show. Who is the villain in the show that she was saying “f*** you” to? It’s the straight white male. In fact, watch any Disney creation nowadays and you’ll find that the straight white male is being diminished and emasculated in almost every product.

HBO Max’s “Velma” makes it no mystery that the writers hate white men to the point where even the leftist critics think it’s a bit much. Die-hard social justice try-hard Bree Larson of “Captain Marvel” fame was constantly decrying the presence of white men.

Don’t think that the constant focus on men means they don’t have it out for women either. While women are mentioned far less, you can see just how much they think of white women with the race swaps in movies.

They race swap purely because many of these hard-leftist elitists have a deep-seated animosity or even hatred for white people, and eliminating them from roles and subsequently inciting anger about this elimination (which they see as purely white backlash despite the evidence), makes them feel like they’re not only doing something moral for society but, more accurately, they’re scratching their own hateful, racist itch.

Is this the motive behind every race swap? Probably not, but I imagine this is the reason behind a whole hell of a lot of them happening lately given the constant chatter and sneering from showrunners and creators.

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The race swap is insulting and not to white people. It’s devoid of creativity. It reeks of spite and bigotry, and probably most egregious of all…it’s just tired and boring. I know that if I see an unnecessary race swap the movie will have lazy writing and, at worst, preachy messages in it.

And given box office numbers for woke productions, I don’t think I’m the only one that’s picked up on that.

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