Captain America

So I'm reading about how Marvel is doing "screen tests this week in its search for the actor to play Steve Rogers, the alter ego of the title character in its 'Captain America' movie," and I notice that the list of contenders—John Krasinski, Michael Cassidy, Patrick Flueger, Scott Porter, Mike Vogel, and Chace Crawford—has the same problem as Details' "Next Generation of Hollywood's Leading Men" gallery I mentioned the other day.

Now, I know that Captain America is a white dude in the comic and all, and I remember that it was fucking heresy to suggest that Star Trek's Captain Pike be recast as a woman, but I stand by my contention that a belief in the inherent equality of people renders absurd any argument that a privileged character must retain the characteristics of privilege to prevent undermining a character's heroic nature.

Which is a fancy way of saying that I don't believe Captain America has to be white. Or straight. Or even a dude.

(As an aside, I'm unthrilled with a female counterpart named American Dream. Heroines are treated as sexualized fantasy objects enough without having "Dream" right in their names.)

The questions up for discussion, thus, are: Who would you cast as Captain America? And why?

I'm giving my vote to Rosario Dawson. She hails from NYC, which is a quintessentially American town, she's a philanthropist, she's a feminist, and she's Puerto Rican, Afro-Cuban, Native American, and Irish, which is exactly the sort of melting pot make-up I would expect an anthropomorphized America to have.