Cure Dragon 255 wrote:I think any African American voice actor could have been a bit uneasy about playing a guy who so obviously resembles a Black Face character like Black. On top of him being evil and despicable.
Not that it makes it right. And I'm probably cutting Funimation TOO much slack.
In Hollywood, there are many instances (more often than not) that Jewish actors/actresses play the roles of Europeans and then people who don't know any better assume "Hollywood is so white" when that obviously isn't the case. Some Jews do look European because they are partially, as they share what's called European-Jewish DNA (from the Eastern side of Europe) so they're part European and part Jewish, though mostly the latter for what it's worth.
Now, as for Africans to voice African characters. In the case where it's voice-acting you're not actually playing a live-action role but voicing a character so it's entirely optional if you hire an African voice-actor/actress to voice the character. While optional, it definitely would give more authenticity but if it's a character that only pops up a couple of times or not even that then it's not worth bothering about with.
Afro Samurai is a perfect example where an African voice-actor needed to be hired because the character had to have a genuine African voice. In general, Africans have deeper, thicker, somewhat sexy/attractive and an authoritarian voice than folks from other races.
Also, Star Officer Black is kind of a bland and generic character so if he was given a voice with a personality that definitely would have made him a much more interesting character. Still, he was just a character that came and gone like the wind. Bora the Native Indian character, on the FUNimation dub was voiced by Dameon Clarke (European voice-actor).
Lastly, since we're on the the 'people of this race should voice this character' scenario then pretty much all Dragon Ball characters should have been voiced by Japanese and Chinese voice-actors who could VA in English. Not sure what about the talking animals in human form or alien forms such as Namekians, though.. probably anyone. Saiyans although aliens too like Namekians, they look very much human so that'd go for the Japanese.