John Adams said: "
So... I guess (for me) the question at hand is: Should the purposefully designed intentions of the creators of the show be ignored and disrespected, or should the voices of those who are personally wronged by the "patterns" and "perceptions" mentioned above that this casting decision exemplifies take precedence.
If the purposefully designed intentions of the creators of a show are disrespectful and feed into inequity and industry-wide ill effects, even if that wasn't the intended effect, then no, they shouldn't be respected or given a pass. Even if in this instance the creators weren't deliberately trying to hurt anyone, I don't believe simply saying "That's what the creators wanted" can be used as a blanket excuse. It ignores the fact that creatives are (for now) human beings, and human beings are fallible. They're also not operating in a vacuum. Where is the line? If other creators' intentions ARE deliberately disrespectful and ill-intended, if they set mandates that were deliberately racist/sexist/anything, would they still get a pass because "That's what the creators wanted"?
Even beyond the theater, we live in a world where, just because the cause is innocuous, that doesn't excuse the effect. In most instances, if someone breaks something without intending to, something was still broken. If someone physically harms someone without intending to, someone was still harmed. (I feel like there's a show about to open on Broadway about that very thing...) The intentions may be mitigating but the very real effect still has to be contended with. People seldom say, "Well, they didn't mean it to be bad so the thing that happened wasn't actually bad after all."
The article you linked to eloquently details how, no matter the thought process that went into them or the intentions behind them, the creators' decisions fed into the same excuses the industry has used not to cast Asian performers for years. That making shows more relatable and universal means making them whiter, in a way that seldom applies in reverse. (Funny that making the characters universal meant giving them non-Asian names, as if real-world global South Korea-based companies aren't shipping products with more Korean-sounding names worldwide...) That white performers are supposedly easier for audiences to relate to, or place themselves in their shoes (or "anthromorphize" when they're robots...), or see as romantic leads than Asian performers.
And yes, too often those arguing for or justifying Feldman's casting are those unaffected by this issue, or prioritize one person's feelings over the very real hurt thousands have expressed, or are (perhaps unintentionally) doing the same thing the creators did: promoting whiteness as universal. Those who argue that "anyone" should be allowed to play this supposedly non-race-specific role without arguing that every other non-race-specific role should be open to Asian performers is simply saying that white performers are more relatable. (I've asked several times if the people so vehemently arguing that this one white actor should be allowed to play this supposedly non-race-specific role are equally vehement that Asian actors should be allowed to play other non-race-specific roles. There's been far less urgency on that point.)
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