Facebook Comment Saying All-Asian Cast in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is Boring and Racist Goes Viral

One person who didn’t get it commented under a post by Linda Nguyen on Facebook:

The commenter, identified only as Daniella, wrote “Sounds so boring with all Asian tho? Like, where’s any variety at all.”

Unsurprisingly, the buffoonery of her comment sparked the necessity for a quick lesson about “variety” in Hollywood films.

After Nguyen tried to explain how unprecedented a film of all Asians is in Hollywood, Daniella insisted that it sounded “boring,” somehow finding it sad they “rejected people of colour” or “real really good American” actors to cast Asians. It should be noted that Asians are not White, and therefore are indeed people of color. Unfortunately, Daniella just didn’t seem to get it, going on to call Nguyen “racist” for her beliefs.

Of course, people were all there for the comments:

Then there were some who would deny that the need for an all-Asian cast is not necessary because, in their eyes, Asians aren’t underrepresented in Hollywood at all (they are):

It’s a given that not being Asian/Asian American gives some, at best, an outsider’s perspective to the experience of actually being Asian/Asian American, so it’s foolish to use generalized statistics to tell people of color that their “people of color problems” aren’t real. No one should assume that everyone, especially on Facebook, gets it (or even knows the difference between Asian and Asian American), but there’s plenty of evidence and “statistics” out there that Asian and Asian American women are fetishized in the media, Asian and Asian American men are underrepresented and used as tokens in film and television, that films with Asian characters occasionally get whitewashed (and flop), that Asian/Asian American directors are underrepresented in Hollywood, that diversity in Hollywood actually does make money, yet whitewashing persists — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“Crazy Rich Asians,” directed by John M. Chu and starring Constance Wu, Henry Golding, and Michelle Yeoh hits theaters on August 17, 2018.