John Stewart’s first appearance in comics, in 1972, involves him challenging a police officer. Some blond cop is harassing two guys playing dominoes on the street, and Stewart tells the pig to back off. “You want trouble,” the cop sneers, and Stewart replies, “I kind of doubt you’re man enough to give it—even with your night stick!” The cop is about to do something more…when another cop comes up and tells him to back off. “Fred, respect has to be earned. The way you acted, you don’t deserve a nickel’s worth!” End of parable.
That parable strains credulity even more than a magic wishing ring—and perhaps for that reason, it needs to be retold, on a broader scale. Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams want to talk about racism—but they need to do it without in any way implicating systems. Racism is caused by bad people like Fred the cop, who fail to act respectfully. It is thwarted by individual bravery (a la Stewart) and by the forces of law and order themselves (like that second cop.) The forces of authority and justice, the folks with the uniforms, are the good guys. Doubt them not.
And so the plot grinds on. John Stewart learns he’s to be the back-up Green Lantern to Hal Jordan, and, in the space of a page, he goes from defying cops to being a super-cop himself.
A new bad apple authority figure is quickly introduced in the person of a racist Senator. Stewart (like that bad cop) disrespects the Senator, and is punished by good cop Jordan, who insists that Stewart become the Senator’s super-bodyguard. Stewart is also reprimanded for calling Jordan “whitey”. “Something in that reminds me of that bit about “he who is without sin casting the first stone” Jordan huffs testily. On the next page, Jordan says that the Senator’s racist diatribes are protected by free speech. Mild epithets against white people are anathema; but the black guy has to be told that the Constitution ensures politician’s ability to encourage actual racist violence.
A black person tries to assassinate the Senator, and Stewart refuses to stop him, which pisses Jordan off. But then it turns out Stewart had deduced that the assassination plot was a false flag operation; the shooter was meant to miss, and then another shooter was going to shoot someone else, and the Senator would use the ensuing chaos to bring about race war. Jordan admits that he was put off by Stewart’s “style” but he now recognizes that the back up Green Lantern is a good egg. “Style isn’t important any more than color!” Stewart says, couching the lesson in terms which carefully dance around the possibility that whitey Jordan’s initial prejudice against Stewart might have something to do with race.
Not coincidentally, the plot here precisely mirrors that of X-Men: Future Past. In that film, the heroes must save the establishment officials who threaten them in order to prevent a backlash in the form of a race war. And so too John Stewart has to act to prevent a guard being shot in order to prevent the racist Senator from starting a second “Civil War.” In both cases, the stories are about marginalized heroes threatened by the establishment. And yet, the plot tergiversates about in order to allow those superheroes to do what superheroes always do — protect the status quo.
And what happens to the Senator himself? He is implicated in attempted murder, but the heroes don’t even bother to arrest him. “I’m certain your colleagues in Congress will bounce you back where you belong!” Jordan declares. Stewart, who you’d think would have to be somewhat skeptical, tacitly endorses this naive and surely extra-legal approach to criminal accountability. But ensuring equality before the law is less important than assuring the reader that the people in power aren’t all bad, whether they be police, congresspeople, or the white Green Lantern. There can be a black superhero, it seems—as long as his main focus is saving white people’s self-image, and not black lives.
I don’t read this issue as a persistently white-nice story as much as you laid out here. There’s certainly more O’Neil could’ve done with tackling racism, but if the purpose is to just introduce John Stewart as a character and have that character be realistically black, I think it did a good job of it. When I was younger I used to think this was horrendously over-the-top, and I wasn’t wrong. These days, I appreciate how Stewart in this one-off appearance (he didn’t appear again for I think three years, and intermittently for ten years after that) actively uses the ring to go after what he thinks is wrong. It wasn’t Hal’s idea to look for a potential race baiting plot, it was John’s based on what John could see and what Hal couldn’t see.
The issue isn’t perfect, but for what it was going for I think it’s actually quite successful. I don’t think it’s pro-authority figure at all. It doesn’t exactly lambast them, but doesn’t ridiculously glorify them either. Yeah it’s cheesy and a bit too complacent with itself, but I think as an introduction for who became arguably the most recognizable DC black super hero, it stands on its own well. But I would like to elaborate further with an essay of my own, so I’ll get to it.
Cool; I’ll look forward to your piece!
I agree there’s something to having Stewart be the one who foils the plot, and implicitly the one who has a better understanding of what racists will do and how. The constant reassurances that good white people exist just grate on me…and I do think the plot ties itself in knots to make a black superhero fit into superhero tropes.
Did he really make the grammatical mistake in the first quote you give?
…I think it’s pretty safe to assume that anyone reading anything I’ve said on race and prejudice issues in 40+ years will find ME hopelessly naïve, if not sometimes wrong-headed and often shrill, so I’m comfortable giving O’Neil credit for trying, and having the courage to try hard when it was a dicey proposition at a very conservative company(as much or more credit to the GL/GA editor, by the way)…
(Noah, you have my email and I don’t have yours…)
No, I think that’s my mistake! Sorry about that.
I can’t wait for Donovan’s response, but I tend to agree with Noah here. . . but I also agree with BU, I admire it for trying and failing.
Also, I learned a new word from this post: tergiversate
I thought it was a typo until I looked it up!
I think I first read “tergiversate” in a Wallace Stevens poem. Great word.
It’s hard for me to pat it on the head for trying because obviously there were folks at the time (1972) who had much more interesting and subtle things to say about race. James Baldwin was writing then; Maya Angelou…there were blaxploitation films and pop music which addressed these issues a lot more thoughtfully.Superhero comics were obviously lagging behind…but that just means superhero comics were backwards and kind of awful.
James Baldwin was writing comics? ;)
If only…
I also appreciate that it tries and fails to engage race in a meaningful way, but I also have to admit that I’m getting a little tired myself in applauding attempts at this kind of thing. I’m getting to where I feel like if you can’t talk about racism in systems, you should stop trying to participate in the conversation and listen for a little while. Because to me, the eagerness to show that “cops aren’t bed, but there are a few bad cops” view of police in America undercuts the whole message. In the end, it seems like the comic is just showing that John Stewart, if he wants to be a Green Lantern, has to be more like Hal Jordan, that is, whiter.
[shrugs] I just know that I struggle to be good and understand -and say and do the right things- on issues of equality and social injustice, and hope those hypothetical future readers of HU will cut me the same slack I’m extending O’Neal when I didn’t get it right enough. Trying should count for a lot – we are all trapped in our individual skins, and getting it right is a journey few ever complete in this life.