for WoC- paternalistic or protective?

Note: I am a woman but not of color (unless you consider January pale to be a color).

I would say that everyone should speak up against neo-nazis. I don't think we should evolve into Alphonse and Gaston (e. g. "After you." "No, after you." "No, after you, I insist.") when it comes to speaking out against racism. Sort out the niceties later, but deal with racism when it strikes, I feel.

I think one of the issues with women of color not getting to be love interests on TV, etc. is the dearth of them. But there's a real dearth of anyone not WASP on TV right now. Aside from Howard Wolowitz and Rajesh Koothrapalli on The Big Bang Theory, can you name any other Jews or people from India who are in first-run shows? Films do show women of color as love interests although not always (e. g. How Stella Got Her Groove Back, for example), although I agree there's not much these days.

But TV and film are both stymied by, of all things, the Sarbanes-Oxley Law. Yes, really! Sarbanes-Oxley was passed in order to prevent another Enron, and so large corporations are required to prove they are carefully researching the market when they do something new. This works great for oil companies, car companies, etc. But it stinks for intellectual property holders, because the safest and best-researched investments are (a) to open pictures with the same people who have been opening them for years, such as Tom Cruise, and (b ) remakes and reboots galore. It is hard to open a picture with a new face; it's pretty much impossible in mainstream Hollywood because it's too risky. New IPs are hard to get started. Plus people love nostalgia, and Baby Boomers have a lot of nostalgia to choose from. Why make a new science fiction IP when you can just reboot Space 1999 or the like?

Women in general have issues with being talked over. It's not a phenomenon restricted to just one race. We get mansplained all the time no matter what we look like. I sincerely hope my friends (of all races, genders, etc.) will tell me if I am speaking over them or seem to be invalidating their opinions. I mean, that's what friendship is for, to be able to bring such things up if they bother us. Thanks for an interesting question; I hope others get a chance to respond.

BTW, I just found this re Alphonse and Gaston if you're curious.

On a internet forum it can be hard to tell who is of what color or gender. I see that as an important advantage. True color blindness. Why do you even care if your allies are black or white, male or female? Why does it matter to you?

I do not believe that this is true. There are many examples that contradict this statement from Jennifer Beales in Flashdance to Halley Berry in X-men and Swordfish.

Which brings us to a problem... It is impossible to have a factual dialog about these issues in public forums when questioning an ideological narrative, even with facts, is seen as an attack.

Public forums come when there is an equal dialog, meaning that all the people in the conversation are free to speak their mind, and all viewpoints can be expressed.

If you see this as a matter of "attack" and "defense" then you have already lost.

There are many areas of society where racial inequality means an unequal playing field. In these cases, standing up to make sure that people of color have a voice is very important. This doesn't mean that facts don't matter, or that White men don't also have a voice.

But I would argue that in Internet forums, this isn't the case. Here I am a Green Troll. I identify as a male troll... but that doesn't even matter.

When questioning, and facts and disagreement are seen as "attacks", dialog is not possible... even in a forum such as this where there is a level playing field.