>>115931903>>115934200Holy shit people, those aren't opposing thoughts. A voice doesn't have a race. Anyone can play anything so long as the voice sounds right. That said, most of the big voice actors in California are a big ole pack of whiteys. To their credit, they're really fucking good at their jobs which is why they've been doing it for 40 years. How often do you think people of non-white backgrounds get the opportunity to voice characters though? How annoying is it that they go out of their way to have a menagerie of skin colors in a show, and then everyone voicing them is a white industry insider? Its not about whether anyone can voice any character, its about whether those opportunities are even arising. The first thing you can do is stop having all the white people voice POC, so suddenly there is a demand for those roles to be recast. How many aspiring VO artists are going to finally get their foot in the door because of this?
The casting needs to be better. They can't just keep saying "we've got a black girl, is Cree Summer available?" or "We've got a black guy, is Phil Lamarr or Kevin Michael Richardson available?", and it needs to be more than "Hey, we payed Estelle for a 160 episodes, aren't we progressive?" The field needs to be larger, and it needs to be standard to have a large array of minority VO artists to choose from and not be a matter of going out of your way to make sure this black character is voiced by a black guy.
That's Phil's whole point. You can't point to him, say "black guy who voiced a white guy! Racism is solved!" How many offers do you think he gets where he gets pitched the premise of a show, and gets told "And there's a black guy! That's you!" Fuck that. You want a black person to voice a black character because its important they actually bring that background to the role? Get some people in to the biz and stop having to rely on one off castings or grabbing another cracker who knows a casting director.
