Fighting Phantoms:

On All-White Actual Play

This post was written by a human. This blog will never utilize generative AI. You can pry my em dashes and semicolons from my cold, dead hands.  

“It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary…

And I urge you to be careful. For there is a deadly prison: the prison that is erected when one spends one’s life fighting phantoms, concentrating on myths, and explaining over and over to the conqueror your language, your lifestyle, your history, your habits. And you don’t have to do it anymore. You can go ahead and talk straight to me.” —  Toni Morrison, Portland State University, 1975

In the introduction to her revolutionary book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, the late bell hooks writes:

“Teaching is a performative act. And it is that aspect of our work that offers the space for change, invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst…

To embrace the performative aspect of teaching we are compelled to engage “audiences” to consider issues of reciprocity… to teach in varied communities not only our paradigms must shift but also the way we think, write, speak. The engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself.” -- bell hooks (emphasis mine)

Although hooks goes on to delineate some differences between teachers and traditional performers, I still find myself drawn to this passage when thinking about the catalyzing potential of Actual Play. To me, just as teaching is a performative act, there is always some dimension of performance that can be an act of teaching. I am drawn to hooks’ assertion that it is the performative aspect of teaching that creates a catalyst space, a space for change. If as performers in a performance-based art form we are indeed creating catalyst spaces, are we as Actual Play artists also compelled to “engage audiences to consider issues of reciprocity?” If we perform in and for varied communities, must our paradigms and habitus* also shift? To be engaged performers, do we need to always be in dialogue with worlds beyond ourselves? I believe that the answers to all of these questions are an emphatic “yes.” 

Of course, there are those who disagree. Some people do not care to perform in or for varied communities. Some people do not particularly want to be engaged with worlds beyond the one they are used to. 

And many people do not want to think of their art, and this art form, as a catalyst space. Many go so far as to assert that Actual Play “is not that serious” or “not that deep” or “is not intended to make a political or social statement.” But I would argue that all art, whether lighthearted or serious, humorous or tragic, is making a statement and is a potential catalyst space. The nature of the catalyst can vary. It can push people towards positive systemic change or reinforce current power structures and cultures of domination or encourage uncritical complicity. 

Regardless, people are going to take something away from our art. They may consciously experience our art as a catalyst for change, or their experience of art-as-catalyst may be more subconscious. But the language we use, the stylistic choices we make, the ways we interact with fellow performers, the tools we utilize— all of this creates the conditions for people to come away from our art with some part of their habitus having either been challenged or reinforced. 

When I consider Actual Play performance as a medium that enables the kind of teaching bell hooks is talking about, I feel reverence for the possibilities that our art form holds. A large part of my intention with starting this blog is that I aim to write about shows that exemplify worthwhile catalyst spaces, shifting paradigms, and engaged voices.

I also feel angry. Because there are many people in this art form who are not questioning or wrestling with their habitus, who want to claim that their art is “not that deep,” and who (paradoxically for people who spend a lot of time in fantasy worlds) are not in dialogue with worlds beyond themselves.

Today I’m going to talk about a very specific slice of that anger. I’m going to talk about all-white Actual Play productions, and I’m going to spend a large part of this piece speaking specifically to other white people in Actual Play spaces.

If I’m honest, I resent the fact that we are more than halfway through 2026 and we are still having to talk about this. It’s not surprising, but it’s frustrating as hell. I had not planned to write about all-white AP as the first topical post on this blog, but like a particularly persistent phantom, it has reared its head again. Recently an advertisement for a new Actual Play on a well-known, well-funded network came across my timeline. Every performer listed was a white person. And something in me itched to speak my piece on the subject. 

I have been in online AP spaces as a lurker and active participant for a little over seven years now. As far back as I can remember, this conversation has cycled through the AP circles I'm in at least once a year, if not more frequently. People of Global Majority (Black people, Indigenous People, people of color) and even some white people have explained why all-white Actual Play is harmful more times than I can count. These explanations are always met with the same response: excuses, tantrums, flouncing, and at worst, emotional violence and reputational sabotage.

I have been paying careful attention to the excuses offered since I first started watching this space circa 2019. The reasons given are so commonplace as to be predictable and so ridiculous as to be exhausting. The conversations usually go something like this:

“I didn’t really think about it and/or I cast an all-white AP because only white people applied to my casting call or were available for the production.”

If you didn’t think about it, that’s pretty telling. And if you didn’t have any Black people, Indigenous people, or people of color applying to your production, that exposes some big core issues with the way you are operating. And if it’s true that only white people were available for your production dates, why didn’t you delay the production until you could work with a more diverse cast?

“It would be too hard to delay the production or change the makeup of the cast because I don’t have any nonwhite friends or acquaintances.” 

Really? None? Why don’t you try to make some? 

“It’s too hard.” 

Too hard? Why? Because it would require some effort and humility?

“No! It’s because I live in a remarkably white area. You can’t imagine how white it is where I am. Only white people live here, you see, but some of them are poor white people/queer white people/disabled white people, so they should count as not really white. Anyway, there are literally no Black people, Indigenous people, or people of color where I am, and so I can’t possibly make friends who aren’t white and cast them in my shows.” 

Being marginalized and white doesn’t make you not white. And it is almost certainly not true that there are zero BIPOC living in your area. Besides, even if it is true, the internet exists. Couldn’t you make an effort to make a more racially diverse group of friends and acquaintances?

“I have a busy life. I don’t have time to make a whole new group of friends.” 

Well, make time?

“I don’t have time to do the work, period.” 

It seems like you could use the time you would have spent making an all-white AP to do some of this work instead. 

“You don’t understand. Even when I do try, BIPOC don’t like me. I don’t know why, but I know it’s not my fault because I’ve always tried to be nice to them. This is definitely not me attempting to excuse my own racism.” 

Now it sounds like you are invoking your own niceness, blaming BIPOC for not liking you, and deflecting from what BIPOC and maybe even other white people are telling you about the way you come across.

“Look, I am not racist! I don’t have a racist bone in my body! It’s unfair of you to expect me to do this! Unfair standards like these are why nobody wants to work with BIPOC/likes leftists/why people like me can’t have a successful AP!” 

You get the idea. 

The other day, I asked people on Bluesky about the most common and/or most memorable excuses they’d heard for all-white AP. It’s worth reading the replies. (It’s also worth noting that someone illustrated my point beautifully by responding to me using a lot of the very excuses I lay out above, then flouncing and blocking me.)

In the replies to my post you'll certainly find examples of the excuses I list above, and many more besides. I could spend time dismantling each of them, but when I think about the proliferation of excuses for all-white AP, I am reminded of the quote from Toni Morrison’s 1975 address at Portland State University that I included at the beginning of this post. As I recall the countless cycles of excuses and explanation I have witnessed, I can’t help but think: 

“The very serious function of racism… is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being… 

And I urge you to be careful. For there is a deadly prison: the prison that is erected when one spends one’s life fighting phantoms, concentrating on myths, and explaining over and over to the conqueror your language, your lifestyle, your history, your habits. And you don’t have to do it anymore. You can go ahead and talk straight to me…”

The excuses for all-white Actual Play are racism, plain and simple, and this cycle is distracting. It has kept BIPOC artists in our art form explaining, over and over again, their reason for being. It has consumed a lot of time and energy that could have been spent on other endeavors. And Morrison is right: it is like fighting a phantom that rears its ghoulish head over and over again. It is draining and enraging and exhausting. 

I want freedom from fighting these fucking phantoms, for all of us.

In her Portland State address, Morrison also tells us: 

 “To avoid the prison of reacting to racism is a problem of the very first order. Where the mind dwells on changing the minds of racists is a very dank place.”

I don’t include this quote to imply that we — especially fellow white people — should not speak out against racism in Actual Play circles. To the contrary, I include it because I strongly believe aspiring anti-racist white people need to take up more of that work. Most of us have let the work of pointing out, explicating, and countering racism fall upon People of Global Majority. But as white people, we should be questioning our white peers about the composition of AP casts and crews; declining to be part of all-white productions; shutting down and pushing back against excuses like the ones detailed above; and educating and engaging people who are genuinely willing to learn.

A major problem in Actual Play circles, as in the wider world, is that many white people are not willing to learn. Many white people are not willing to be, as bell hooks says, "engaged voices always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond ourselves."

Here’s a truth that I, a white person, believe with my whole being: in the year 2026, most white people are in their heart of hearts aware of what they are doing when they choose to be racist. “I just didn’t know that I shouldn’t cast an all-white AP” or “I just didn’t think about it” or “But there’s no way I can cast BIPOC in my show” are bullshit excuses. We live in an era where Nazis and TERFS are running crumbling empires, where Zionists are conducting a genocide against Palestinians with the support of governments, and where the U.S. government is purposefully disappearing nonwhite people (and some white people!) and imprisoning them in torture camps here and in other countries. If you are a white person in this environment, you know damn well that it is a choice to make art exclusively with other white people, and you know what that choice is telegraphing.

All-white Actual Play isn’t merely in poor taste or boring or frustrating (though it is all of those things and more). All-white Actual Play is a catalyst space for whiteness. It reinforces a habitus where white people are at the center of institutional power. It shrinks our imaginal worlds and our real world rather than expand them. It upholds a culture of unchallenged white hegemony. And when white people choose to take part in this, it is a conscious choice. (Just as it is a conscious choice when, after being called on their racism, white people attempt to inflict reputational damage on BIPOC artists by calling them “difficult to work with” or “ego-driven” or “angry.” These are not accidental choices. They are purposeful.)

Morrison also uses her address to tell us that: 

“Racial ignorance is a prison from which there is no escape because there’re no doors. And there are old, old men, and old, old women running institutions, governments, homes all over the world who need to believe in their racism and need to have the victims of racism concentrate all their creative abilities on them…

They are in prisons of their own construction: and their ignorance and their stunted emotional growth consistently boggle the mind.”

There are plenty of people in the Actual Play space who “need to believe in their racism and need to have the victims of racism concentrate all their creative abilities on them.” They know what they are doing. They are choosing it. And I hope that all of us who aspire to liberation will stop coddling these people.

Attempting to change the minds of racists is a dank place. These people are in prisons of their own construction. They are choosing to stay there, and they are furthermore choosing to support the construction of further prisons in the minds, hearts, and cultures of their audiences. I’m not saying to never call these people on their shit; I want to emphasize that I do strongly encourage fellow white people to challenge this at every possible opportunity.

But I think that when these apologists for whiteness start throwing tantrums or attempting to manipulate or DARVO their way out of accountability, we should shut it down. Name it for what it is, name it to our creative peers, block them, and put the energy and resources we would have poured into fruitlessly attempting to change the mind of a determined racist into materially supporting BIPOC artists.

If you are a BIPOC AP artist reading this, I hope that you will protect your peace, whatever that looks like for you. Although I know this may not yet be possible in the world we inhabit, I have a deep hope that you will not have to spend any more of your time fighting phantoms in a dank place. 

There is another sort of phantom that pops up when discussions of all-white Actual Play start, one that I want to discuss here. This phantom operates from a paternalistic belief in their own benevolence. This is the kind of white person who will toss out an even more nefarious type of excuse for their behavior, one cloaked in language meant to mimic the language of justice. 

Although I am sure there are a host of excuses along these lines, in my experience there are three major recurring excuses used by this kind of white person.

The first is that although their cast is composed entirely of white people, it is also composed entirely of people of marginalized genders, queer people, disabled people, etc. This attempt to play a Get Out Of Whiteness Free card is a tired maneuver. It positions a white person’s marginalizations as a diminishment of their whiteness, as something that is able to replace or even eclipse the perspectives, positionalities, and lived experiences of BIPOC artists. It ignores that BIPOC are also people of marginalized genders, queer people, disabled people, etc. It is a ridiculous and insulting excuse and should be treated as such.

The second excuse that I have frequently heard from this kind of white person is a sanctimonious declaration that it is rude to assume that just because someone appears to be white, they are. This is a particularly devious excuse because it is paying lip service to a truth: that some people who pass as white are not. Of course it is important for us all to be aware of the complexity of passing in our current world, and to be careful about checking our assumptions. But when a white person brings this up to defend an all-white AP, they are not in fact articulating a concern about the fucked up ways that race is constructed and enforced in our societies. They are using it as a deflection. Every time I have encountered a white person using this excuse, it has been presented as a hypothetical whataboutism, not an actual concern that affects someone in their group. It uses the complex, real experiences of white-passing BIPOC as a way to dodge the ways that white people are upholding whiteness. This a dreadful way to behave. 

The third excuse relies on a similarly sanctimonious declaration: that to pursue working with BIPOC artists simply for the sake of having BIPOC artists as part of one’s show is tokenism. These people almost always go on to claim that since tokenism is bad, and they are refusing to participate in tokenism, they are actually being good white people. 

This excuse is such sly, nefarious bullshit. For one thing, if you are aware enough of tokenism to be making this excuse, you should also be aware enough to know that having an all-white Actual Play is also fucked up. You should know that the myth of the “good white person” is a vehicle for white people to stroke our own egos and soothe our guilty consciences.

Whenever people use this excuse, I always think that they are telling on themselves. What they are really saying is that they understand the call for a more diverse Actual Play ecosystem to be a system of boxes to check in order to be understood as “good” white people. It reveals a very narrow mindset: in these people’s estimation, Black people, Indigenous People, and people of color are not human beings with unique and valuable perspectives and lived experiences which they draw on to make art, but rather a statistic, a box to check to avoid being called out. These white people think they can weaponize social justice terminology like a cheat code in order to be exempted from calls to do better. This is so dehumanizing and pathetic and we should not tolerate it. 

Again, these excuses result in us spend our time fighting phantoms rather than engaging in the kinds of catalyzing artistic work that our world so desperately needs.

There is a final excuse I want to discuss in this piece.

“We are just a group of friends making a show together, and our friend group happens to be all white. [sad face] We can’t be expected to recruit new friends and mess with the chemistry of our group! [trembling lower lip] Are you calling us racist because we’re playing a game with our friends?”

This excuse was used to justify what is arguably the most well-known Actual Play out there having an all-white main cast for its first three campaigns. I don’t know that anyone in the cast ever said it quite so explicitly, but I do believe they tacitly endorsed it with their messaging around being “just a group of friends playing a game” and “needing to have trust with other people at the table.” I also don’t recall them doing much to push back on this notion when it traveled around their fandom. 

(Yes, I am aware they had nonwhite guest stars. No, that doesn't change the fact that they had an all-white main cast for three whole campaigns.)

And I think this is a really compelling example of a show with an all-white cast having a catalyst effect. I have encountered several shows with all-white casts that use this exact excuse, some even adding in a further justification that “Critical Role did it!” as if it is okay to have an all-white cast because a group of liberal white voice actors did it first.

White people often follow this excuse up with some histrionics. They become extremely sad that they are “being told we cannot make art with our friends.” They loudly fall back on the “but how are we possibly supposed to make BIPOC friends?!” excuse. They rant about their art being policed, as if there is a SWAT team of art cops about to descend upon their show feed and take it away forever. They earnestly express that they’d like to do better but they just don’t want to wait until they have put in the necessary work to make their shows more diverse.

White people, listen up: you can make whatever art you want to make alongside whoever you want to make it with. You have the right to do that, but having the right to do that does not entitle you to an audience and does not place you above criticism. You have the right to make art. Other people have the right to critique it. 

You can make an all-white Actual Play with your white friends. You all may be very talented! You may be marginalized! It may be a fun show! People may even give you a lot of money to make it! But that doesn’t mean your whiteness goes away. It doesn’t mean that your show ceases to be a catalyst for white hegemony. It doesn’t mean that other people have to like your show. And it doesn’t mean that anyone owes you engagement with your art. 

So where do we go from here? 

In Teaching To Transgress, bell hooks writes: 

“There can be, and usually is, some degree of pain involved in giving up old ways of thinking and knowing and learning new approaches. I respect that pain. And I include recognition of it now when I teach… I teach about shifting paradigms and talk about the discomfort it can cause…We practice interrogating habits of being as well as ideas. Through this process we build community.” - bell hooks, from Embracing Change in Teaching to Transgress

It’s time to give up old ways of thinking and knowing. It’s time for white Actual Play artists to commit to being engaged voices that are always evolving and are always in dialogue with a world beyond ourselves. I dream of Actual Play circles that practice “interrogating habits of being as well as ideas.” I hope for more white Actual Play artists who can take the pain and discomfort that come with redistributing power and deconstructing whiteness and transmute it into generative learning. I wonder if the oft-debated idea of an “Actual Play community” might actually have a chance at coming into being if we were able to do these things.

Actual Play is a relatively new artistic medium, and I think it’s time that we all understand this artistic medium as a catalyzer. What might our art form mean for the world if more of us intentionally invited our audiences to be in reciprocal learning with us? What might our relationships with each other and our audiences be like if we all — and especially white folks — practiced shifting our habitus? What would change in Actual Play spaces if we each tried to continually be evolving in dialogue with worlds beyond ourselves? 

For some of us, these efforts would likely involve the kind of pain and discomfort hooks names above. But that is not a bad thing. Discomfort often causes us to grow as people. Our lives and experiences are deepened when we embrace the pain of releasing old paradigms that are not in service of a more liberated world. The process can even lead to us making meaningful, impactful art about the experience of transformation. 

The medium of AP explicitly offers each of us the chance to imagine and build new worlds — and to point out failures in the systems embraced by our current world. All-white Actual Play isn’t imagining or building anything new. It uncritically embraces what already is without offering an alternative.

White artists, we can do better. We must do better. No more excuses, no more tantrums, no more flouncing, no more violence towards BIPOC because we got called out. 

To all of the readers who have made it this far and aren’t about to throw a tantrum in my comments: my hope is that the next time you see an all-white Actual Play promoted, you can drop a link to this essay rather than go back and forth fighting phantoms. 

May we all keep shifting paradigms. May we all find ways to be in dialogue with worlds beyond ourselves. May we keep creating art that catalyzes profound and meaningful movement towards liberation. I look so forward to being in dialogue with many shows and people that are doing this work. 

A Postscript 

I know some white people are going to have Reactions™ to this. 

If you’re a white person and you have read this far and your gut reaction is to be pissed off at me for saying what I’ve said, it is a great time to sit with that. Why do you think you feel so angry or defensive or insulted? What do you think those emotions are pointing to, deep down? These feelings can be your great teachers, if you let them. Calm down. Breathe. Stop typing. Sit with this and reflect for a minimum of, I don’t know, three months. After you’ve done so, then come back and engage. 

I also know some white people are going to come away from this with questions about how to shift their practices. What should I be doing differently in my creative process? How do I make friends with BIPOC in AP spaces? What percentage of my cast should be BIPOC? How do I not fuck up? 

My broad answer is that while there are certainly models we can use to change up our own practices, there is no one formula for not fucking up. There is no perfect way to try to be friends with someone. There is no ratio of casting that guarantees you will not do harm. This is about your ability to be in relationship with other people, not because they can do something for you, but because you genuinely care and want to get to know them as artists and human beings.

Part of being in relationship with others is accepting that we are all going to fuck up at some point; this is especially true if you’re a white person in relationship with People of Global Majority. We are gonna fuck up at some point. It’s how we handle the feedback we receive and how we grow from fucking up that determines whether we can earn trust. Can we accept being called out or in with humility? Can we examine our own actions, patterns, and habitus with care and a genuine desire for change? Can we incorporate sensitivity consultants into our processes for making shows? Can we grapple with the fact that we may not be ready to make certain art yet, that we may need to mature as artists and people before we dive into a project that is getting cautionary feedback? Can we accept that it is better to wait — or cancel a project — than to put an all-white AP out into the world? 

Are we approaching BIPOC artists with the attitude that they are basically present to help us check off a diversity box, rather than understanding BIPOC artists as fellow human beings with complex and precious tapestries of experiences and perspectives? Do we understand that striving for diversity in Actual Play is not about checking a box because we don’t want to be called out, but about a practice of redistributing power and deconstructing whiteness? 

Some of us are eager to ask questions like “Is it ever okay for me as a white person to make a solo AP show? Is it problematic if I make a duet show with another white person, etc.?”

This is just my opinion, but I don’t think it is particularly useful to focus on whether it is “right” or “wrong” of you to make a solo AP as a white person or a duet AP with two white people. If I’m answering the question for myself, I don’t really have a problem with the former and I approach the latter on a case-by-case basis. For me, the more important questions to ask are: how will I respond if I learn that someone has opted out of engaging with my solo or duet AP due to the fact that it only features white performers? Can I accept that feedback with grace and understanding? Can I explore where it might lead me? Am I about to be a hit dog hollering, or someone who can take a note when one is given? (These questions can also apply to casts of three or more people.)

For shows with three or more performers, I think it is again important to ask ourselves some questions about the goals and themes of the art in question, the relationships we have cultivated, and our own creative processes.

For instance: what are the themes I hope to explore with this project? How do I intend to go about casting the show? If I will host a casting call, how will I ensure that the process is welcoming to People of Global Majority? How will I receive and respond to feedback? How will I know whether to proceed with making the show or whether to pause and wait?

I know some people reading this will likely want to know what ratio of BIPOC to white people showrunners should be aiming for when casting a show. Personally, I am most interested in engaging with and creating shows where at least half or more than half of the performers are BIPOC. 

That is not to say I think it is morally wrong to engage with shows where there are BIPOC performers who represent fewer than half of the cast. I am certainly not trying to police the decisions and art of BIPOC performers who do perform with majority-white casts. I do not believe there is one perfect diversity formula that applies to every show out there. 

But I am very comfortable saying that as white Actual Play artists, we ought to be doing everything we can at every level to materially support BIPOC artists in the space. We need to be boosting BIPOC artists’ work, from performances to graphic design to editing, etc. We need to be directing funding and opportunities to People of Global Majority in the Actual Play space. And as white artists, we ought to be continually challenging ourselves to do more, to keep learning and growing, to cultivate humility and take feedback when it is offered.

And if you are a white person who is active as a performer or other artist in the space, if you aren’t asking already, it’s time to start asking about diversity in casts and crews when you are approached by showrunners. We can decline to be a part of all-white productions. We can kindly challenge showrunners about their casting practices. We can challenge fellow performers when they are a part of all-white productions. We can advocate for inclusion of more BIPOC in shows. And we can encourage our white peers to wait and engage in necessary work rather than proceed with making an all-white AP. We can also tell fellow white people to chill the fuck out when they start melting down, having tantrums, and micro or macroaggressing all over the place.  

Let’s try not to be phantoms, shall we? 

*Habitus is a framework proposed by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in 1977 that, very broadly speaking, considers the ways our habits and dispositions are shaped by our social contexts and ingrained in us by various institutions (family, educational and religious organizations, etc.)