Race Lift / Minority to Other Minority

Zack Taylor in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (left) and Power Rangers (2017) (right).

Examples of Race Lift where the ethnicity of a character is swapped from one minority to another.

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Anime and Manga

• In Dragon Ball: The Path to Power, some of the characters have went through race lift. Major Metallic who was The Ahnold in the original is now a Scary Black Man and Staff Officer Black who was black now appears to be Native American.

Comic Books

• For a period of the late 90s and early 00s, Magneto was retconned from being ethnically Jewish to Romani, possibly because Marvel feared the appearance of antisemitism by having one of their major villains be a Jew, albeit one who doesn’t practice Judaism and who identifies primarily as a mutant rather than as Jewish. They basically gave up once the movies cemented Magneto’s origins as a German Jew in popular consciousness.
• In previous continuities Karate Kid was of at least some Japanese descent, usually on his mother's side. In Legion of Super-Heroes (2020), Ryan Sook's redesign gives Val a Manchu queue braid implying Val's now of Chinese descent.
• In Young Diana Oenoe, a minor Amazon from the George Pérez post-Crisis 80s run, is changed from a red-haired black woman to an Asian woman.

Fan Works

• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, the superhero Firestorm is traditionally depicted as either Caucasian or African-American through his primary hosts Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch respectively. In this story, he's Japanese but does most of his work in the United States.
• In Between My Brother and Me: Mors Omnibus, Mallow is presumably depicted as the Pokémon version of Polynesian in the anime and game. Instead, she's changed to the (rarely seen in fiction) Burmese to reflect the fanfic author being part-Burmese herself.

Film — Animated

• The original Aladdin takes place in China, though everyone is a Muslim (except for one Jew), everyone has an Arabic name, and the government is Islamic in structure. So it's not surprising that the Disney version as well as every other adaptation in existence sets the story in the Middle East. Islam did reach China, along with other parts of South and East Asia, so that is not absurd.
• In the Japanese version of Wreck-It Ralph, the Ambiguously Brown Minty Zaki was changed to a Japanese racer, Minty Sakura. Certain scenes in the film were reanimated to showcase the new Minty design, such as the start of the Random Roster Race, but other scenes left the original Minty Zaki model intact, creating confusion. Nevertheless, Minty Sakura is featured prominently in the Japanese film poster and even has a small bio on the site, referring to her as "the Japanese girl racer".

Film — Live Action

• The French film The Crimson Rivers (Les rivières pourpres) changed the Moroccan-French detective from the novel to an Armenian-French detective played by white actor Vincent Cassell. Cassell claims this was because he was talking with the director which Arab- or black French actor could best portray the role, and upon hearing the description of the character, insisted that he had to play it. The character was made Armenian to maintain the backstory of a marginalized minority "from the streets".
• In the comics, Thor supporting character the Hogun the Grim is generally drawn as decidedly non-Nordic, and the only thing revealed about his origin is that he's not an Aesir like his fellow Asgardian warriors. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe adaptation of Thor he's played by Tadanobu Asano, who is Japanese. For the past years, the comic Hogun has been drawn as kinda Mongolian.
• This has become something of a trend for the Iron Man movie adaptations:
  • In the comics, Iron Man's origin comes from being captured during The Vietnam War. The film, however, updates the war being fought to the conflict in Afghanistan. So villainous Viet Cong soldiers became multiethnic terrorists. Notably, Tony Stark's doomed helper Yinsen keeps his name despite his origin being Afghan.
  • Ben Kingsley portrays the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. The Mandarin, as his name implies, is a half-white, half-Chinese Yellow Peril villain, while Kingsley is half-white and half-Indian. Rumor has it the character's race was changed to make him less offensive to Asian audiences, especially in light of the Chinese government contributing a sizable amount to the costs of producing the film. Anyways, it turns out that Kingsley's Mandarin is merely a British actor pretending to be the Mandarin, with the white Aldrich Killian claiming to be the real Mandarin near the end. To add a further twist, All Hail the King reveals that Killian was also an imposter; the real Mandarin appears in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, played by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai.
  • In the original The Eternals comics, Kingo Sunen, though technically not human, resembled a man of East Asian descent and had a career as a famous actor who starred in Japanese samurai movies. In the Eternals movie, Kingo instead resembles a brown-skinned Desi man (played by Kumail Nanjiani), with the films he stars in now being Bollywood musicals made in India.
• In the Green Lantern (2011) film, Hal's sidekick Tom Kalmaku, who is Inuit in the comic, is played by Taika Waititi, who is of Māori (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) and Russian Jewish heritage.
• In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Batroc's lieutenant Machete is changed from South American to Somalian.
• In Power Rangers (2017), the formerly African-American Zack has become Asian, while the formerly Asian-American Trini is Hispanic. This was presumably done to avoid the Unfortunate Implications of the Black Ranger being black, and the Yellow Ranger being Asian from the original. To balance, the originally white Billy Cranston is now Black. Confusingly, Zack's surname is officially still Taylor and Trini's surname, though not mentioned in the dialogue, is still Kwan (via Word of God that her father's name is Mr. Kwan).
• In Everything, Everything, Maddy is changed from being half-black and half-Japanese to half-black and half-white, possibly to reflect the background of Amandla Stenberg who played her.
• In Beastly, Kyle has a Hispanic housekeeper named Magda. In The Film of the Book, his housekeeper is a black Jamaican named Zola. The did keep the subplot about her wanting to get green cards for her children, but removed The Reveal that she's actually a magically-disguised Kendra.
• The French film Intouchables is based on a Real Life story. The character of Driss is black, played by Omar Sy, while the real life person he's based on, Abdel Yasmin Sellou, is an Algerian living in France. The American remake The Upside keeps the character black, played by Kevin Hart.
• Juliet and Butler are described repeatedly as being Eurasian in the Artemis Fowl books, but are played by Black actors in the film adaptation.
• The Harder They Fall (2021): The real life Rufus Buck and his gang were Creek Indians, but in the film, he's portrayed by Idris Elba, a black man. Also, Cherokee Bill is played by Lakeith Stanfield, a black man, but the real man was of mixed Cherokee, black and white ancestry.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp introduces FBI Special Agent Jimmy Woo, who is Chinese-American in the comics, but Korean-American in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• The Martian: After Irrfan Khan was forced to bow out of the project due to previous obligations, Indian Venkat Kapoor became half-Black, half-Indian Vincent Kapoor, played by Chiwetel Eijofor.
• Artemis Fowl has Butler and Juliet, who are both Asian-European in the books and Black in the film. And also no longer siblings.

Literature

• In-universe example: In Sewer, Gas & Electric, set 20 Minutes into the Future after a racist-engineered plague wiped out nearly everyone of black African descent, Australian aborigines find plenty of work in Hollywood filling black roles in period pieces. One elderly aboriginal woman makes a career of playing Rosa Parks in commemorative ceremonies.
• Practically every recent adaptation of the story of Aladdin depicts him as Middle Eastern, even though he's Chinese in the Thousand and One Nights version, because the original author and his contemporaries had no real idea what Chinese people looked or acted like besides vague accounts.
• The character Friday in Robinson Crusoe is identified as a Carib Indian (the tribe the Caribbean was named after) in the original text, but various illustrators and film adaptations over the centuries have portrayed him just about anything but Native (South) American. The most common one is black African, but he's also been New Guinean (The Film of the Book from 1997 with Pierce Brosnan).

Live-Action TV

• The Netflix documentary series African Queens cast Adele James, a Black British actress, as Cleopatra VII, whose historical records state was of Macedonian descent; meaning she was light-skinned, with distant Sogdian ancestry (an ancient East Iranian civilisation). Director Tina Gharavi cited a theory that Cleopatra could have been mixed race to defend her choice, though said theory has been disputed and remains unsubstantiated.^note According to a theory by archeologist Hilke Thür, her half-sister Arsinoe IV (whose death Cleopatra ordered) may have had African heritage (they shared a father, but not a mother). Said theory has not been accepted by academic consensus since it has not been proven that the grave she attributed to Arsinoe and based her research upon is hers (the skeleton is that of a person who was too young to be Arsinoe, among other things). Also, all native Egyptians (and Cleopatra's Greek-Macedonian court as well) look like sub-Saharan Africans in the series, while in Real Life they had a lighter skin tone.
• Arrow: In the comics, Connor Hawke is of mixed heritage (half white, one quarter Black, one quarter Korean). In the show he is played by the fully African-American actor Joseph David-Jones.
• In Battlestar Galactica (2003), Boomer, who was played by African-American actor Herbert Jefferson Jr. in Battlestar Galactica (1978), is given a Race Lift and a Gender Flip and played by Korean-Canadian actress Grace Park. Since this version of Boomer is a Cylon, another iteration of her takes the role of Lieutenant Athena (white to non-white).
• Bodies (2023): While both versions of Shahara Hasan are defined by their Muslim heritage, the comic's version is Persian, while the show's is South Asian.
• The Dropout: Asian-American actor Nicky Endres^note a non-binary transfeminine queer actor (she/they) plays designer Ana Arriola^note queer woman of transfeminine and non-binary experience (she/they), who is Latinx.
• Guerrilla: Critics have accused the series of invoking this by making Jas South Asian and not black. Actual members of the British Black Panthers have defended the show, however, saying the Black Panthers were also often South Asian (women included) and "black" then was used as an umbrella term for both. The issue of gendered racism has come up due to the lack of South Asian men and Black women as co-leading roles in the series though.
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland portrays Agrabah, which is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Middle East, as having a blend of that and Indian cultures. Jafar is played by Naveen Andrews, who is of Indian heritage. Although confusingly enough, the showrunners cast him on their previous show as an Iraqi character, and then recast him on the parent show with Israeli actor Oded Fehr.
• In the Cartoon Network film Re-Animated, Jimmy's friend Craig and his sister Robin were Asian. When the film was recycled into the show Out of Jimmy's Head, their new actors were African-American.
• The proposed American remake of Sailor Moon would've had the Japanese cast reimagined in America, with Sailor Jupiter becoming African American and Sailor Venus becoming Latina. Sailor Mars is the only one who would've actually remained Asian.
• She's Gotta Have It:
  • Greer and Mars are both biracial here. Greer's mother is French and White. Mars is half Puerto Rican.
  • Opal and Clorinda seem to be mixed race too, like the actresses.

Video Games

• The Western port of Persona made most of the characters Caucasian, but had Masao changed into a black teenager named Mark.

Webcomics

• A rare in-story example from The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Doc changes race whenever he puts on his Dr. McLuchador disguise. This was promptly lampshaded by the alt text.

Web Original

• Commentary! The Musical alludes to this in "Nobody's Asian in the Movies"
  "Who do they want before they want an Asian?
  A Persian, or a Cajun, or an Indian,
  or an American-Indian, played by a Mexican..."
• Eagle in Pretty Dudes goes from Mandarin-speaking Chinese-American in the show to Latinx in the novelization.

Western Animation

• Beware the Batman sees Lady Shiva changed from Chinese to, as her name implies, South Asian.
• Bane is Chinese rather than Latino in the Bat Man of Shanghai shorts from the DC Nation block.
• The Chinese-American Chan Clan became the Japanese band Shoyu Weenie when they were brought over to Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
• 1940s superhero Black Marvel was Native American in his original comic, but became African-American when he appeared in Spider-Man: The Animated Series. As he put it,
  Why do you think I called myself Black Marvel?
• Doubled with "Diversifying a Cast", The Batman made Ellen Yindel into an Asian-American—and as she's a Composite Character with Renee Montoya, she's also this version as Montoya was Latina.

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