Basically in terms of culture, most Asian cultures emphasize education and stable job goals rather than the arts.
This is deeply rooted in our country of origin. In Korea, you will not move up in society without an education.
China is pretty obvious one too.
Also in Vietnam, though there is a strong performing arts culture, not every family can afford to send their kids off into a risky art school.
Japan is like that too.
Usually what happens in these countries is the kids have to either take on their family businesses (due to the collectivist nature of these societies) or take on a financial stable job or education choice (usually to take care of their own family or just to survive).
There are many suicides from students each year from these countries because of the high stakes there are associated with education.
This is embedded deeply in our culture, which gives birth to the tiger mom.
So even though many of the other asian kids i grew up with came from wealthy families who immigrated to Canada, they chose to study much more stable fields like business, accounting, medicine....
Even though they have a choice to be an actor, very few choose to, even though they very well could. I don't think its all because
white men discourage minorities from the film industry.
I do believe that can be a reason why a minority might feel they won't have a long and prosperious career due to the lack of minority representation,
but by no means is it the complete reason. I think its less than half the reason. At least for myself and what I think for Asians.
I understand why people think that the lack of minority representation discourages minorities from pursuing careers in acting. But here is the thing.... minorities are still minorities. Most careers are gonna be overwhelmed by Caucasian people in Canada and USA but that doesnt' stop people from going into those fields necessarily.
So your post raises a lot of questions. which are much more complicated to answer than to ask.
If we have so few minority actors, especially if native american actors are less than 1% of the industry (there are 20 000 or so working actors in the USA),
then I can see why it would be difficult to find someone who is actually Native American to act in such a role.
SO here is the problem. If you are the director of this play, and you can't find a Native American actor (which is likely to be the case due to being less than 1% of the acting industry),
then I can see why we need to find alternatives. However, to me this is strange. If being Native American isn't important in the story, then I'd adapt the role so the character is no longer Native American.
like why go through the trouble of passing off a white actor as a native american if it wasn't important to the story?
Like... if you seen the new "Death Note" film, they made the character "Light Yagami" to "Light Turner". This was because they hired a caucasian as "Light".
In my opinion, it would be offensive to hire a white actor, then paint their skin yellow to pass them off as Japanese. That's just ridiculous.
However, what if being Native American is important to the story, but the director genuinely doesn't find any Native American actor?
Well, I don't know if this makes it racist if they hire someone who looks Native American to play the role. It could be, but it's a grey area to me.
I have to disagree that only an actor from a culture can play a role of a culture authentically. Acting is all about empathy and research.
I have met white people who are more educated in the history and brutality of slavery of Africans than from my African American friends.
Also how authentic do we want to get? I have never been an immigrant, but if they wanted me to play a Korean immigrant, should I not be able to play
it because I have never experienced such a thing? Like surely there are Asian actors out there who are actual immigrants.
My point is that this raises more issues like able-actors playing disabled characters.
Again, the actor is putting themselves and challenging themselves to play a role, and I don't think playing a disabled character should be off limits.