Also, a giant word to everything you said about the supposed need to "justify" deviation from the white etc. "norm", but not to justify the "norm" itself.
Yeah.

I *think* he's speaking against the attitude where, like, character A "happens" to be Asian. (Or Native American, or European.) But it's not a choice between that and needing a *reason* for character A's ethnicity.

If there wasn't a "default", it wouldn't really matter, but in this world once people do sit down and try to justify *why*, you end up with things like the all white Avatar:TLA cast.