Well, I’m very late to this article but I have to say, that was eye-opening. I just want to give Amanda Sternblerg a big hug and apologise on behalf of my race now :-(

Huh, unabashed racism and poor reading comprehension go hand-in-hand—who'd have guessed?

I could see it, but Cinna doesn't die (unless he does in the other books - I've only read the first one), and in the book his ethnicity is open to interpretation; and Rue is close to nature, but so is Katniss - there's no contrast to lend meaning to that. Thresh dies in the regular course of events, he doesn't…

Slightly O/T, but I can't imagine how embarrassed their parents must feel right now - if not for the racism, then for the the obvious comprehension fail.

I know, right? It kinda ruined "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" for me.

Wierd thing. I'm white, but throughout the book I was convinced Rue was black. So when casting came out, I was like "Yeah, that's exactly what she looks like!"

I am Black too and I am so glad to read the book and see the movie because now I can cosplay some real characters at Dragon*Con. Yeah, come on. Although other Sci fi and Fantasy characters are black, it's under a shitload of makeup. Think Avatar. Think Kligons and Romulans in Star Trek. But I can be a character…

I have never seen so many red comments on Jezebel. In any case, this is all patently ridiculous and for anyone to defend the insanity of those Twitter comments is as ridiculous as the comments themselves. The author described certain characters with a lot of specificity; if you lack the reading comprehension skills to…

Why do we always have to ply "devil's advocate" when it comes to white racism?

I'm thinking if someone's dropping the N-word about an actor and saying that any suffering that the character suffers is lessened by their race, then yes, it's not really that much of a stretch to label those people racist. Especially when the characters are defined in the book as being 'dark skinned'.

Right? I feel like if the poster spent even half as much time thinking about how this is problematic and not something we should just be content with instead of writing the above then, fuck, maybe there'd be hope.. Instead it's a lot of bla bla I like status quo, bla bla token black issue, bla bla, but lets spare the…

I can't agree here. The author was quite clear on these issues. Saying something like "It was as sad for Rue to die because she was black" is showing a lack of sympathy based on racial feelings. Ignorant or not, an adult should know that these ideas are racist and reconsider them before posting.