By my count, Favreau is the twelfth white male to head one of these projects since the Disney buyout (fourteenth if you count JJ and Rian twice). Someone over there has to understand how this looks.
If 48 people came to Disney with pitches, and 12 were white men, 12 white women, 12 black men, and 12 black women, I hope Disney picks the 12 best pitches. True equality will be when no one even remotely considers physical appearance but rather how good they are for the job.
That being said, should the 12 best all happen to be the white men Disney shouldn’t be criticized. And considering white men make up the majority of the film industry (which hopefully will change), a more appropriate representation would be 35 white men, 6 white women, 6 black men, and 3 black women. In which case the probability of all best pitches being white men is much higher.
You’ve got it backwards. There will be no need to even remotely consider physical appearance after we have true equality. The problem is that you get a huge advantage by being a white male, no matter how good you are for the job. A minority (including females as minorities in this case) has to overcome more than just “how good are you?” They also have to overcome being a minority, something the white male doesn’t have to worry about.
There’s no way to know if the 12 best all happened to be white men, or if some of the best never were given a chance.