Fear of an Asian Planet

I saw the later half of the “Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins” movie today, and the only understanding I can gather about all the complaints that they cast an “Asian” as Velma is that this is racism. The actress, Hayley Kiyoko Alcroft is half-Asian, so therefore is also “half white”. So what’s the problem? She’s no more Asian than she is white – why is she being labeled as “only Asian”? It’s like a famous American mixed-ethnicity politician being labeled as “America’s first Black President” or another mixed-ethnicity professional athlete being identified for only his father’s race. Do these complainers only see what they consider an “impurity”, and not the remaining white side? That’s seriously Third Reich thinking. Alcroft performs the role well, regardless of her ethnicity. The show’s producers were not trying to “Asianify” the character: They cast the actress that fit the role the best. Period. A syndicated reviewer mentioned the whole “Asian” thing and went on to say that she also didn’t have freckles like the original cartoon character, almost intimating that being Asian was mutually exclusive to having freckles, and therefore made her another level inappropriate. Sorry, dude – Asians get freckles too.