How hard is it to find Asian actors in Hollywood?

There was a TV spot on Dragonball: Evolution last night, where there were snippets from interviews with the actors and the directors.

[For some reason, James Marsters with dark hair and an American accent still caught me off-guard. Watdaeff.]

I'll have to admit that the movie scenes looked cool, provided you didn't know what the original looked like.

There was this bit when the director was talking about how they were following the anime and stuff. I told my mom the fans were up in arms because Goku was played by a white guy, in an obviously Japanese/Asian environment, and my mom was like, "Then why is the director saying that he stuck to the source material?"

Bingo.

I don't follow Dragonball, but even I knew that the whole movie was wrong. The first trailer gave the impression that Piccolo wasn't green, and someone had even commented that the movie was actually Bulletproof Monk 2.

[Gave me the lulz anyway, partly 'cuzza Chow Yuen Fat's Hawaiian shirt. Also, I found out that Master Roshi is bald in the anime.]

If they could find Asian actors (that speak good English, by the way) to play Yam Cha and Chi Chi, why couldn't they have gotten an Asian actor to play Goku? I don't think a white actor would look any less ridiculous in Goku's famous orange-and-blue outfit than an Asian actor.

Which brings me back to the topic at hand, and to Avatar. Earlier on, the cartoon creators were talking about how M Night Shyamalan was excited and will be respecting the source material

[Now we know that the word 'respecting' is to be referred to in inverted commas.]

As I've mentioned before, I don't follow DB, so I can't nitpick as I do on Avatar, but on surface value (indeed!), it looks like the Avatar movie will be disrespecting the source material even more than DB did, with the producers making radical alterations in the glaring of all aspects: appearance and race.

If DB:E could find a bunch of Asian actors (to be background fodder, but to act in the movie, no less), why couldn't the people behind the Avatar movie do the same? Oh wait, they already have. Looks like there's a trend here, folks.

It's going to be an epic failure on Paramount's part to make Avatar "the next Harry Potter" since all else points to the fact that Avatar is going to be the next DB:E, except with elements of nature.

[Cross-posted]