One would think that in an industry that's brimming with diversity, casting companies would want to encourage it.

What horseh*t - it depends on the audience and the story

Try as a white actor to get an acting job in Bollywood....... where the audience for the movies are 99% Indian.

Or perhaps they reject people with some kind of handicap who want to play Tarazan. Famous sketch by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore about a man with one leg trying to get a job as Tarzan.

In fact I recently auditioned for a movie on rapper drug gangs in Chicago - I was clearly discriminated against. Just because I am white, 50 and fat does not mean I couldn't act very well playing a 20 something black gang member. It is discrimination I tell you....

Let's see...whites makeup roughly 75% of the U.S. population ( see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States). Since the casting notices were calling for 69% whites, one could make the charge that whites are being discriminated against. Diversity is all good and well, but when people are being passed over in the name of diversity, it turns into discrimination, racial bias, racism, and etcetera. The people that are spending their time to try to make 'whites' out to be villains would be a lot more productive citizens if they would only look at their own biases before projecting them onto others.