Race lift

In the Mortal Kombat video games, Jade is black, but, in the film, she's Asian.

A race lift occurs when the race of a character from a work of fiction is changed in a derivative work. This is different than just having a character pretend to be a race they are not, it actually requires the derivative work to alter the character's race. This happens in a number of different ways, the most popular occurrence is to change the race of a character into the dominate race of the target audience under the justification that people won't buy it otherwise, the typical justification for why Hollywood frequently casts white characters in non-white roles, a slightly different process called whitewashing. Another common occurrence is to change a minor white character into a token minority so avoid accusations of racism. It's also common to change one racial minority into a different racial minority, since, as far as the producers are concerned, all minorities are the same, and, therefore, interchangeable. Sometimes this is done to prevent a scandal, for example, if the villain of the original work was written as a minority race, and the creators don't want to seem racist, they will recast the role with a majority race. Occasionally, race lifts are used to remove a racially insensitive depictions. The term "race lift" is a play on the term "face lift."

Examples

• In the Batman series, the character Catwoman frequently shifts race depending on the adaption.
• In the film adaption of The Shawshank Redemption, the character Red is changed from a white man to a black man.
• The film adaption of High Fidelity has a black Marie De Salle rather than the white woman from the book.
• Jade, from the Mortal Kombat series, first appeared as originally black in the games, but has since been portrayed by a variety of different races.
• The film adaption of Starship Troopers changes the Filipino hero into a white guy.
• The original Baxter Stockman is black, but he's depicted white in the first animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• In the original Men in Black comic, Agent J is white, but he's black in the films.
• Ford Prefect is white in the Hitchhikers series, but he's black in the film.
• In One Thousand and One Nights, the character Aladdin is actually Chinese, though he's depicted as Middle Eastern in nearly every adaption.
• The character Danc (renamed to Karn) in Breath of Fire had his race changed when the game was localized because he was originally depicted quite racistly.

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