You're not saying that it's not whitewashing so much as you're saying racebending is OK. And of course it is. Because changing the race and cultural background of characters can subtly change the meaning and context of the piece.

Except for the separate issue of majority cultures erasing minority peoples. Now, Japan is not a minority culture, it is a nation-state. But why is it always (in American media) that Asian characters are made white and never white characters made Asian?

I hope and suspect that this is addressed in the movie, that Kusanagi has taken a white body for reasons.

"The story doesn't talk about race, it talks about sci fi ideas."

"Ugh, so you're trying to justify race bending?"

Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese film, set in Japan with Japanese characters and you don't think casting the Japanese protagonist as Scarlet Johansson is not whitewashing?

On top of that, Paramount contracted a VFX studio which claims Paramount asked them to do some CG tests to make Johansson look more Asian. Paramount claims it was other characters and not Johansson but either way that is about as clear cut a case of whitewashing as there is.

Now if they're redoing the movie such that it is set in NYC and organizations and characters are all changed to reflect being set in NYC, it would be a little bit different, but it would it still be yet another case of Hollywood taking a story and purposefully eliminating people of color from it.

The creators of the anime are OK with it.

People in Japan (or, as the epithet you call them, "people of color") are OK with it.

Most of the people watching are OK with it.

Maybe the whole thing is overblown by people looking for outrage?

Richard III is an English play, set in England with English characters. It's performed all over the world by local actors in the local language. I don't hear anyone crying foul or claiming that Shakespeare is being blackwashed.

The real outrage isn't that a non-Japanese actor is being cast to play a Japanese character, it's that their casting decision is based on what they think will result in the highest ticket sales.

Btw while the tv series is based in Japan, the film you mention never says its location. It was left ambiguous on purpose by the creators but most signs actually point to it taking place in somewhere like Hong Kong.

It's set in a world of cyborgs and the main character doesn't look Asian, even has blue eyes. Scarlet looks just as much like the character in the anime as any Asian actor would.

Why change it then if it doesn't matter?