Last week, the internet threw itself into a brawl over a casting announcement once again.

The announcement was in regards to the live action reboot of the DC Comics property “Teen Titans” and the recent updates on the casting. The week prior, fans were introduced to Teagan Croft as the magic user Raven and for the most part, fans have been quite accepting of that casting. The problem arose when the casting for alien princess Starfire was announced on the 23rd of this month.

Anne Diop, from shows like "24: Legacy" and "Greenleaf," was announced to play the space character and soon as that the lines were drawn. There were many who either expressed their excitement over the casting or were simply indifferent and just wanted to wait to see how she does in the role. But then there were the trolls that always seems to come out during these types of casting calls to criticize the apparent race-bending of white (or in Starfire’s case, white coded) because Diop is a dark skinned black woman.

These groups tend to rear their head whenever there is a diversity hire, especially in geek fandoms like comics and sci-fi series. We all saw the backlash when John Boyega was cast as Finn, a black stormtrooper in the new Star wars series or the reaction in when Michael B. Jordan was cast as the Flaming Torch during the relaunch of the Fantastic Four and even the snide comments fans have made about Tessa Thompson portraying Valkyrie in the new Thor movie coming out later this year. When it comes to the change of race for a character, the discussions tend to be sensitive.

But why is this? Why do we throw up arms when a character’s race is changed when jumping to a new form of media. While the examples provided are for characters originally depicted as white (in the case of Finn’s stormtrooper, his had reasoning for why he was able to be a trooper), with Starfire the backlash is confusing mainly because she is of an alien race with a non-human skin tone.

Granted, it has yet to be determined if they will use CGI or makeup to give Diop the original skin color or not but regardless of that decision, the character is fiction and of alien origin, there should be no reason for this type of criticism.

It could another example of fans (more specific white) feeling like these entertainment industry is feeding the politically correct machine or it can be just another example of racists not wanting to change with the times. The fact of the matter remains is that there is and has been a problem with diversity. It is improving yearly, one year the main oscar awards had only white nominees and then the next several actors of colors are nominated and Oscars call themselves out on the issue.

But no matter the progression, there will always be people who hate simply to hate or try to make the argument of “in the canon, they are this way” or “why can’t minorities create their own characters?”

Both arguments are moot points. Both can be explained away with bowl of m&ms theory. Imagine two bowls of m&ms. One bowl is filled to the brim while they other is empty. Because we started this conversation about race, let us have the empty bowl represent characters of color and the filled bowl represent white characters. According to the 2016 study done by USC Annenburg, the number of non-white characters in roles in Hollywood with speaking roles was only 28.3%. That means the rest of the speaking roles was filed by white actors up to 71.7%.

More often than not white characters have no purpose for being that race. They are white and are simply white. Minority characters such as people of color, members of the LGBTQA+, a lot of times have a story around that identity. There is a purpose to making them a specific way and so if you erase that, you erase a part of makes them who they are along with taking away potential representation. This is a reason why people get vocal when a minority character is changed as well, it takes away and erases the identity.

Not only that, but when people make the argument for minorities to make their own characters or make their own thing, the issue is not if they do that or not. It's more so what happens? The object could be ignored by the public or it could changed and altered past the original purpose. And even if those things are ignored, for every creation by a minority, there will be another created by the majority.

So looking back at the bowls, we have one 70% filled and the other 30%. Even if we were to add to both bowls, one bowl would always have more over the other. Sometimes a handful is shifted between the two with vastly different results. If we take a handful from the larger amount, they would still have more but at least the smaller amount has more of a chance to catch up. If you take from the smaller amount, it doesn’t level the field, instead, it tries to remove the problem by trying to eclipse it. And imagine people fighting over a back of characters that don’t fit into either slots, characters of alien origins like Starfire. While these characters are ups for grabs with anyone one group, it would be more beneficially to pour some in the more lackluster bowl.

There is no way to truly sugarcoat the feelings of those upset at this and previous casting choices like this. All you can do is tell the trolls bluntly, “You have your whole cake, we deserve at least a slice.” Your characters can still be as you imagine them in their original forms but in 2017, what is considered diverse enough is changing and evolving. Our characters should reflect that.