This clip is circulating of Zoe Saldana discussing her character Neytiri in Avatar, where she suggests that Neytiri is “obviously racist” toward the Sky People….. humans. This gets at a larger issue I have not just with this franchise, but with how media often frames power, violence, and resistance.

Neytiri is not racist. She is traumatized by colonization. Her animosity is not only understandable, it is righteous. Her land is invaded, her people are slaughtered, and her world is fundamentally altered by an occupying force. That she later falls in love with, or forms relationships with, individuals from that group who assimilate into her culture does not erase or neutralize the violence that was done.

Personal connection does not absolve systemic harm.

This is what so much media gets wrong. It whitewashes colonial violence, not just to soften history, but to make the present more comfortable for people who benefit from that violence. It reframes justified anger as prejudice, resistance as intolerance, and survival as moral failure.

That framing doesn’t stay on screen. It directly shapes how people interpret the real world. We see it when Palestinians are villainized for resisting occupation, or when nations across Africa and parts of Asia are condemned for harboring “resentment” toward powers that have exploited, destabilized, and brutalized them. Treating the oppressed person’s anger as the problem, rather than the violence that produced it, is laughable at best and dangerous at worst.