Oh, hello, light bulb--lots of critics were saying Katniss was Melungeon, then, weren't they?

That's the argument here.

Actually this seems to be the link.

That is the weakest argument on it I've ever read (eta: and I guess, the second weakest), though. Neither of them are arguments that she's not white, not like I've seen in fandom.

Thing is, at the end of the day, I don't get why people still insist she isn't white. She is, because the author said she was. Or, the author's opinion is at least as important as yours. You can't override it outside of your own head.

She was written white, so casting her white is at least not wrong, even if there are more interesting ways to go about it. It's completely consistent with the universe, so it's just one more missed opportunity in an ethnically undiverse landscape, not actual whitewashing. And I think it distracts from, say, things like the Avatar argument.

Yeah, I think it's just stupid to say "olive skin" = "not white." And it's not like there aren't ACTUAL problems with whitewashing.

"Olive skin" is used to describe all kinds of people -- sometimes Greeks, for instance. It didn't ping me at all that she meant Katniss was a person of color, but I also knew Prim was fair and blonde and blue-eyed, and so is their mother, I believe.

Anyone Mediterranean could have olive skin, I figure. And we generally call those people white now.

Exactly. I was just going for one example.

But really, and I know this isn't the current topic, those folks weren't always considered white in our culture. Due to race being an artificial construct generally used by the group in power against others.

And that Katniss looked quite different from her mother and sister and seemingly most of the people in her district.

I thought it was the mother and sister who were unusual-looking -- fancy, compared to the regular folk. Edit: Or, at least, there were generally two "looks" -- the more northern-European upper class people and the more Mediterranean-looking poor people.