Likewise, possibly give minor characters like Red Wolf, El Aguila, Thunderbird, Daughters of the Dragon, White Tiger, etc. a real shot at headlining their own quality comics (pony up some dough for the best creative talent).  (I was trying to think of some good minority characters at DC that haven't been given a shot, but all I could think of there were lesbians.)

I'd rather see El Aguila get a shot than see a hispanic Ghost Rider--or a Korean Hulk, or a Chinese Superman, etc.  Or--gasp--create some NEW characters!

I struggled with the concept of white privilege, literally a decade before I ever heard the phrase. It's something I had difficulty articulating to my white friends, this awareness, even in the absence of overt and intentional racism, that I was not white and treated differently. My other non-white friends immediately understood and struggled with the same thing. Feel free to think it's only a catchphrase and a dog whistle, but you'd be absolutely wrong.

Oh, we're perfectly aware there's another point of view. It's been the prevailing one, and the one that needs to change.

Thus, my discussions.

ITEM: I know that the movies are a separate entity from the novels, and Mr. Fleming's character disappeared a long time ago. My thoughts are still to adhere to the source material unless there's a reason to change it. I've never read the Bond books, so I don't know if Bond was ever specified to be a white man; it's not a typical description in most novels I read. The assumption is that the character is white unless specified otherwise (good or bad is for another discussion at another time.)

Daniel Craig, to me, was the "breakaway" from James Bond; blond, older looking, and not particularly handsome. YMMV, of course.

Does Idris Elba deserve a turn as a super spy? Elba deserves whatever role he wants, I think, and I believe he'd be a box office smash. In the Bond-verse... I know there were a lot of other double-o's. Is there one that would suit Elba? Or... crazy as it may sound... what about a Felix Leiter movie, with a guest appearance by Bond? The reverse of a lot of existing Bond films, but that could work. I have seen Leiter both black and white on screen... was this specified in the books?

ITEM: Nicolas Cage as the Black Panther - to the point being made, I am a fan of keeping the original characters as they were designed. I would enjoy a white Black Panther about as much as I would enjoy a black Human Torch (which is to say, not at all.)

I recall Secret Wars and one of the points that Jim Shooter made (intentionally or not). Reed Richards is fixing Iron Man's armor, with the gauntlet off, and Jim Rhodes - the current Iron Man at the time - says something like "Bet you're surprised to see that there's a black man in the armor?" and Reed answers, "Not really. I assumed there was a a man inside."

ITEM: Nicolas Cage in that specific role... eh. Cage does some parts well, some not so well. I don't think he makes a good action/adventure hero. (I think of Benjamin Gates as a scientific adventurer, which I think Cage played to the hilt.) If there were a laid back super hero, he might do well at that, but the ones that I think of that qualify - Dr. Strange, Dr. Fate - are a bit higher class than I think of Cage playing. Maybe he could play Johnny Thunder... maybe Dr. Mid-Nite... maybe Dr. Occult.

"White" is also a bizarre social construct.  And all related structures, like "white privilege" are therefore likewise troublesome if you have any sense of history.  The Irish, and Italians for example, and other immigrants from Southern Europe, were not considered 'white' for most of US history.  Roman Catholics were not considered 'Christian' for most of US history, and still aren't in much of the South.

When I was growing up, I never had a sense of being 'white'.  I was Dutch, because my grandparents immigrated from the Netherlands.  My dad said all kinds of racist things all the time.  But I never remember him making a single racist comment against non-whites.  All of the slurs he used were about the Irish, the Italians, the English, the Polish (especially the Polish), because those immigrant communities were the ones competing with Dutch immigrants in the first half of the 20th century for jobs in this country.  I know a Catholic priest whose parents couldn't get married in the Church he pastors because despite both of them being Roman Catholic, one was Dutch and one was Polish, so that was considered a 'mixed marriage'.

This 'white' identity has no actual culture behind it.  Its just a way of generalizing about a whole bunch of disparate groups of people without a shared history or culture, or even language.  This is why its so hard for people in this thread to pin down 'why is it important for this character to be white'?  Because 'white' isn't anything.  Rather, its important for this character to be the son of working class Irish immigrants in Chicago, or to have come out of the Jewish community in Brooklyn, or from a line that traces its way back to the colonists in the deep South.  The actual history and culture of these characters is important, not their melanin count.  And the same is true of 'black' characters, or 'brown' ones.  There's a different between being Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Thai.  There's a difference depending on when your family emigrated, if they ever did.  These broad labels like 'white', 'black' and 'Asian' are themselves basically racist in considering these differences unimportant.