What White People Say

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

“I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything that’s made me aware of my race,” says Kathie, a middle-aged woman from Buffalo, NY. She was interviewed in 2014 as part of the Whiteness Project, an interactive investigation of what white or partially white people think about their own race, conducted by Whitney Dow.

Kathie’s insistence that she doesn’t, and shouldn’t think about her race neatly underlines why the Whiteness Project is necessary and useful. For the most part, white people don’t have to confront, or address race; whiteness is unmarked and unremarked. For most purposes in popular culture Spike Lee is a black director; James Cameron is just a director. Barack Obama is a black president; George Washington, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan were just presidents. Part of the magic of being white is that you’re the default, rather than the exception.

In defining white people by their whiteness, the Whiteness Project insists that whiteness isn’t normal or natural. Instead, whiteness is a specific, constructed, created identity, which white people acquiesce to, or embrace, or fidget inside of, with varying degrees of grace and insight. “So does the Whiteness Project re-center white people?” Steven W. Thrasher asked at the Guardian when the first round of interviews came out in 2014. “Yes,” he concludes, “but that’s part of the point: Dow wants his subjects to be the center of attention, and the reason for their viewers’ discomfort about white people’s views on race.”

Often, the very thing that seems to define whiteness, in fact, is the resistance to defining or seeing whiteness. In a new series of discussions with millenials in Dallas, TX, released in April 2016, the Whiteness Project interviewees repeatedly think about whiteness in terms of refusing to think about whiteness. Ari, 17, talks about how he’s stigmatized for being Jewish, and points out, perceptively, that while he doesn’t consider Judaism to be a race, other people do, which affects him. But when he talks about whiteness he insists that “the color of my skin has nothing to do with my everyday experiences”—as if his experience and those of black Jewish people would be interchangeable, or, perhaps, as if he hasn’t considered that black Jewish people exist. Sarah, 18, similarly insists, “I never think about my race…my age and my gender has a bigger influence on what I think of as my identity.” More aggressively, Leilani, 17—who is part Asian— insists, “If we want to get rid of racism, stop talking about racism.” For her, talk about whiteness is no talk; when she thinks about her white identity, she thinks about not thinking.

Other interviewees are more willing to try to see past whiteness’ invisibility. Lena, 21, whose father is Arab-American, talks about how she didn’t want him to come to school events because she would be teased or insulted when people realized she wasn’t white (enough.) “Being realistic, I think it’s good that I don’t look too much of anything, because just getting jobs…it’s much better for you if you look white.” Carson, 18, says, “it’s hard to know that I’ll be given more. And it makes me call into question my merit.” Connor, 24, talks about dealing drugs and notes that “there’s been plenty of times where I’ve consciously taken advantage of the fact that I was white.” He adds, ” I would be in jail if I was not white.”

Lena, Carson, and Connor are all talking about privilege, and about the fact that whiteness is not just invisibility, but power. Invisibility and power, are in fact intertwined. You stay out of jail because you’re white, but then the whiteness becomes invisible, so suddenly you have no jail record because of personal merit, rather than because of the color of your skin. Or, as Lena says, you can get a job because your white, and then having the job on your resume is attributed to merit, rather than individual whiteness, when you go on your next job interview. In that sense, the Whiteness Project, by making whiteness more recognizable, undermines the notion that white people come by their success through personal awesomeness alone. As such, it works to confront, or destabilize, racism.

Or that would be the optimistic take. When the first batch of videos in the Whiteness Project was released, there was a certain amount of skepticism on social media from black viewers, many of whom wondered why white people needed to be given more space to talk. And some of those criticisms resonate with this second round of interviews as well. What good does it do, really, for Connor to explain that his whiteness is a get out of jail free card? To what degree is any particular anti-racist agenda advanced by listening to Chaney, 18, explain that she isn’t responsible for the history of racism and doesn’t want to pay reparations. “You can’t get things for people who are dead,” she says intensely. “It’s all in the past.” There is no more racism; there is only white people talking about their innocence, forever.

After each interview, there is a little statistic. In Chaney’s case, that statistic is that 51% of Americans think slavery is not responsible for black people having lower incomes today. The framing is particularly unhelpful; slavery happened a really long time ago, but as Ta-Nehisi Coates documents in “The Case for Reparations,” racism, and using racist laws to expropriate the wealth of black people, didn’t stop in 1865, or 1975, or with the racist subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. Reparations isn’t just about slavery; it’s about what happened in the 150 odd years since slavery, all the way up to yesterday.

“Whiteness Project aims to inspire reflection and foster discussions that ultimately lead to improved communication around issues of race and identity,” the statement of purpose on the website says. That’s a laudable goal. But framing reparations solely as an issue of slavery doesn’t improve communication around race. Instead, it makes communication around race worse. Asking white people to talk about race is useful in highlighting the importance of and power of whiteness—but it also spreads a lot of disinformation. White people, it turns out, are not all that great at talking about race, both because they lack practice, and because part of white identity is ignorance. As a result, the Whiteness Project includes a lot of white people spouting nonsense. Correcting that, or pushing the conversation to a productive place, requires more than a few statistics, especially when, on occasion, the statistics themselves are misleading.

It’s important to highlight whiteness, and to force white people to realize that white identity exists, even when (or especially when) they don’t want to think about it. As Lily Workneh says at Huffington Post, the insights here
included both unsettling and enlightening reflections” But white people becoming more self-conscious about whiteness isn’t, in itself, an assurance of progress: white supremacists and Neo-Nazis are very self-conscious about whiteness. If there’s not an explicit, and forceful, anti-racist agenda, a discussion about race can just end up rehashing prejudices. The Whiteness Project raises important issues. But ultimately, without greater critical context and engagement, racism is unlikely to be defeated, or even meaningfully addressed, by a bunch of white people talking,

Race, Class, and Iggy Azalea

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Noah Berlatsky

This first ran on Splice Today.

From Elvis to Miley Cyrus, it sometimes seems like the only way white people can interact with black music is through appropriation. The latest example of this tiresome American tradition is Iggy Azalea, a white woman who has broken chart records for Beatles. “Iggy is..an heiress to white supremacy, the mix of unearned racial privilege and racial fetish that has historically made black music without black people big business,” Travis L. Gosa writes at The Root, while Britney Cooper points with disgust at Azalea’s adoption of a Southern black accent. “I maintain that there is no triumph and no celebration when we embrace a white girl who deliberately attempts to sound like a Black girl, in a culture where Black girls can’t get no love.”

Gosa and Cooper aren’t wrong — but it’s worth pointing out that Azalea has to some degree anticipated their criticisms. Or, at least, the debut single and video from her album The New Classic, seems to deliberately reject racial appropriation as a reading of her music. Instead, the video suggests that her connection to hip hop is based, not on race, but on class.

Class is right there in the title of the song: “Work.” The track starts with Azalea talking directly about working crap jobs.

Two feet in a red dirt, school skirt
Sugar cane, back lane
3 jobs took years to save
But I got a ticket on that plane
People got a lot to say
But don’t know shit bout where I was made
Or how many floors that I had to scrub
Just to make it past where I am from

The video is in some ways even more directed; Azalea walks through a desert setting, passing by a woman taking in laundry, a spitting, grizzled guy in a trucker’s cap, trucks, and a trailer park. It’s not clear whether this is supposed to take place in Azalea’s native Australia or in Florida, where she moved when she came to the U.S. (“No money, no family. 16 in the middle of Miami.”) Probably it’s supposed to be the latter, and to show the continuity between the two — being poor and white in Australia is not all that dissimilar to being poor and white in Florida.

Poverty isn’t just figured as a white phenomenon though. Instead, work is something that Azalea sees as uniting black and white women both. Early in the video a black dancer twerks in front of a truck; later Azalea twerks (more convincingly than Miley at least) in a strip club for a skuzzy patron while rapping.

“Valley girls giving
Blow jobs for Louis Vuitton
What you call that?
Head over heels?”

She then steals his keys and races out of the joint with a couple of black women, taking the guy’s car.

When I interviewed sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom recently about hick hop, a genre blending country and rap, she argued that “we don’t have any class stuff happening in popular culture, period.” She added, “Hip hop, country, and hick hop—the merging of the two—are all part of the larger cultural domain, which has become a place where we just don’t have class.” Hick hop, or country rap crossovers, are increasingly popular, as Cottom has written, but they tend to be built around black and white men partying. The shared interracial experience is lust, rather than class per se (as an example, check out this Florida Georgia Line/Nelly video.)

Azaela’s track doesn’t completely reverse that: the video certainly provides black and white gyrating female bodies for the pleasure of a male audience. But black and white women are not just the object of the gaze for Azalea; they’re also objects of class exploitation. Black and white women work cleaning floors; black and white women work as strippers — a job that doesn’t look like much fun given the guy Azalea has to cozy up to. And black and white women work in this video, stripping and twerking, almost as if the entertainment industry and the sex industry aren’t all that different. Florida Georgia Line and Nelly bond on the basis of their gender in a milieu which deliberately elides class. Azalea, on the other hand, presents herself as having a common experience with black women that is based both in gender and in class. “Pledge allegiance to the struggle,” isn’t quite a line out of the Communist Manifesto, but Marx would still appreciate the sentiment.

The class statement here still has lots of problems. While the track is in part about work as exploitation, it also presents work as path-to-success; the poor kid worked, and now she’s rich, like Horatio Alger. Moreover, appropriation remains a real issue; Azalea’s twerking while stripping seems like a way to define black women in terms of sex work, then associate herself with both the sexiness and the struggle to make herself look edgy and real. When a white woman declares solidarity with black women in this context, who is really benefiting?

Still, for all its limitations, there’s no way around the fact that “Work” is about work. Criticizing Azalea for racial appropriation is fair. But doing so can’t help but erase, or discard, her argument — which is that hip hop speaks, or can speak, not just to race, but to an experience of poverty and labor which is meaningful to people, and especially to women, of different races and nationalities. Azalea may not be entirely convincing, but still, there’s something to her claim that hip hop is hers because she worked for it.

Editorial Cartoons: Is Michael Sam gay? or is he black?

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Frank Bramlett

A lot of media attention has been paid lately to the case of American football generally and the National Football League in particular. Recently, the NFL drafted its first openly gay man into its ranks, causing a great deal of celebration in some quarters and a high degree of consternation in others. As a fan of (American) football, I am interested in this story because of what it says about the social implications for individual players, team camaraderie, and the fans, too. I am thinking about this because I try to be mindful about and supportive of efforts to eliminate discrimination and promote equality regarding race and ethnicity; regarding sexual orientation; regarding gender; and regarding socioeconomic class.

Since I currently live in Sweden, I don’t see all the news (infotainment) about current events in the U.S., so what I have seen of the Michael Sam story I have found through websites that I visit on occasion. I saw stories on my BBC phone app; on Queerty.com and Advocate.com; and on other random links I saw on Facebook. What I did not see, though, in any instance, was editorial cartoons about this event, so I went hunting for them. Using a Google search, I found a few cartoons, some of which focused on Michael Sam’s race and others on his sexual orientation.

I include below some randomly chosen cartoons depicting some facet of the Michael Sam case. Does the cartoonist in each instance focus more on representations of race, more on representations of sexual orientation, or some combination of both?

Bok (bokbluster.com/creators.com)

The first cartoon borrows President Obama’s earlier discourse regarding the NFL and the incidence of concussions and traumatic brain injury. Bok makes a connection between working class men, beer drinkers, and anti-gay prejudice. (Because of the perspective, we don’t see the butt crack, but we know it’s there and it is revealed.) The image on the television screen is of two men kissing. What is not clear is how the characters in the panel would react to the fact that it is apparently two men of different racial identities kissing. Since it is set in a ‘sports bar’ (pictures of hockey and baseball on the wall), readers might assume that it is a bold statement this man makes about not having a son play in the NFL.

Drew Litton (http://www.drewlitton.com/)

This cartoon draws on the historical significance of racial integration in baseball (an interesting sports cross-over). Litton uses visual cues to communicate Michael Sam’s race, but he uses linguistic cues to communicate Sam’s sexual orientation (the newspaper in his hand). Robinson is pictured wearing his Dodgers uniform (the team he joined) but Sam is wearing his Missouri uniform (not yet having been drafted by the St. Louis Rams).

Keith Knight (www.cagle.com)

Knight’s technique relies much more on linguistic cues to communicate his thoughts about Michael Sam. It may be that Knight uses Sam’s stats rhetorically to establish the rationale for the caption, which shows the linguistic struggle over how to name the importance of this event. Knight decides that it is neither Black History nor Gay History but History.

In her 2009 article published in Visual Communication, Elisabeth El Refaie writes about visual literacies and the processes that readers use to understand political cartoons. Her essay is a pilot study exploring how readers make sense out of the visual and verbal elements in a panel. In her analysis, El Refaie explores five questions regarding the ‘multiliteracies’ required to understanding these cartoons: “How do readers: (a) establish the real-world referents of a cartoon; (b) impose a narrative on the cartoon image; (c) interpret the facial expressions of the depicted participants; (d) understanding text-image relations; and (e) establish metaphorical connections between the fictional scene of the cartoon and a political argument?” (p. 190).

What interests me about the range of cartoons shown above is how few of them rely on metaphorical representations to communicate their messages. Most of them are relatively literal scenes: representations of people having conversations about Michael Sam, or Michael Sam himself having a conversation about his future. Research on editorial and political cartoons discusses the tendency for artists to make their commentary using metaphor: combining two very different domains for the reader to interpret. (For more on cognitive metaphor in cartoons, see Bounegru & Forceville 2011; El Refaie 2003; among others.)

In my very limited search for cartoons about Michael Sam, I found just a very small number that relied on metaphor to communicate the meaning. Here is an example:

John Darkow (columbiatribune.com)

Readers familiar with the story will know that Michael Sam was drafted by the St. Louis Rams. This cartoon by Darkow communicates a similar message to the cartoon by Keith Knight (above), that race and sexual orientation should somehow be subsumed in the general meaning of the cartoon and that the ‘simple’ fact of the draft should be highlighted. One major difference is that the Darkow comic relies on metaphor and the Knight comic is a more literal representation. In fact, ‘Barrier Breaker’ is drawn in such a way that it erases all mention of sexual orientation and it erases all mention of race. The metaphor of a ram breaking through a wall is clear to the reader only if the reader already knows the discourses that play a role in the Michael Sam case. (Under other circumstances we would need to consider underlying or implicit prejudicial messages: the jokes that could be told about a gay man joining a team called the Rams; the jokes that could be made about a black man being represented by a ram.)

It is no surprise, of course, that cartoonists would choose to highlight certain aspects over others. The intersections of race and of sexual orientation in this particular situation—professional sports in the U.S.—are a virtual minefield. Is it safer for cartoonists to create a more literal representation than it is to create a metaphorical representation? Is it simply too difficult to navigate the issues metaphorically? Understanding political cartoons is a complex act of reading that draws on multiple types of literacies and relies on a vast array of knowledge and cultural discourses. Likewise, creating cartoons demands that artists focus on some aspects of an issue or story and leave out other aspects.

I ask readers of Pencil Panel Page and Hooded Utilitarian to provide their own examples of cartoons regarding Michael Sam or regarding similar situations. How do race and sexual orientation function in the commentary of political cartoons?

What If the X-Men Were Black?

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Orion Martin

An edited image from the series X-Men of Color.

“The X-Men are hated, feared and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants. So what we have here, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry and prejudice.”
Longtime X-Men writer Chris Claremont

Imagine a work of fiction that focuses on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s except that in this work, white men have replaced all of the people of color. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X both have white stand-ins and white followers. In fact, almost all of the characters are white men. It may seem bizarre, but this is the X-Men.

The first issue of X-Men was written by Stan Lee and published in 1963. The fictional world, which continues today in the Disney-owned Marvel Universe, featured super-powered teenagers who worked in a group as the X-Men. Unlike other characters that Stan Lee created, these teenagers do not become superheroes through a freak accident, but were instead born with a genetic mutation known as the x-gene that manifests as superpowers (“mutations”) around the time of puberty. They hide their identity as super powered humans for fear that they will be killed by angry mobs.

An image of mob violence from the Stan Lee and Steve Ditko era.

Stan Lee has explained that his main impetus for having the superheroes be mutants was that he wouldn’t have to invent origin stories for every new character. However, he also claims that the comparison to Civil Rights was present from the start. In a recent interview he said, “It not only made them different, but it was a good metaphor for what was happening with the civil rights movement in the country at that time.”
Since the original, largely unpopular episodes written by Stan Lee, dozens of other writers (most of them white men) have built and expanded the world of the X-Men. New characters were added, and the discrimination that mutants like the X-Men face in the Marvel Universe was developed. Over time, the dynamic of the “feared and hated” mutants who nevertheless defend ordinary humans has been used to explore different dynamics of power and privilege*. These include anti-Semitism, racism, and LGBT issues (ableism and sexism, though extremely relevant, are almost never addressed).

Noteworthy X-Men events with social implications include:

—The founding of Genosha, a fictional country where mutants are enslaved – a direct reference to Apartheid.
—A genocide of 16 million mutants.
—The development of a cure for the x-gene mutations, causing a schism in the mutant community.
—The spread of the Legacy Virus, a disease that targeted only mutants. The virus is a clear reference to the AIDS virus and its impact on the LGBT community.

Despite the flexibility of “mutantity” to be a stand in for various aspects of privilege, the Civil Rights movement and racism are topics that come up repeatedly in the X-Men comics and films. Professor X is repeatedly compared to Martin Luther King, and the dream of “peaceful integration.” Magneto, his enemy, advocates for violent mutant revolution and quotes Malcolm X**. Characters in the comic use the fictional slur “mutie” and compare it to racial slurs.

This sequence from God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont shows how Storm and other nonwhite characters are used as props to legitimize the idea that the X-Men are an oppressed minority.

What’s disturbing about the series is that is that all of these issues are played out by a cast of characters dominated by wealthy, straight, cisgender, Christian, able-bodied, white men. The X-Men are the victims of discrimination for their mutant identity, with little or no mention of the huge privileges they enjoy.

Neil Shyminsky argues persuasively that playing out Civil Rights-related struggles with an all white cast allows the white male audience of the comics to appropriate the struggles of marginalized peoples. He concludes that, “While its stated mission is to promote the acceptance of minorities of all kinds, X-Men has not only failed to adequately redress issues of inequality – it actually reinforces inequality.”**

An unedited image from the comics.

I wanted to remix these stories and imagine what they could have been if they had dealt with actual instead of fictional dimensions of privilege. Searching through 50 years of X-Men comics, I selected a half dozen iconic images and scenes relating to discrimination. In these images, I edited the comics so that every mutant had a skin color that was some shade of brown.

In the alternate universe where the all mutants are black, many events in the X-Men history become actual social commentary because they are dealing with real dimensions of power. Reading about black teenagers standing up to a largely white mob is different than reading about white teenagers in the same situation. These images show that when the writers of the X-Men do comment on social issues, the meaning of these comments is hampered and distorted by the translations from reality to fantasy and fantasy back to reality.

Left, the original frames in which Colossus stands up to a mob. Right, the edited version of the same sequence from the project X-Men of Color.

Re-coloring the X-Men so that all mutants are people of color not only makes the themes of discrimination more relevant, it also introduces hundreds of non-white characters who are complex and fully realized. This is something that’s lacking from the current Marvel Universe. Why is Psylocke not only an Asian person of British descent, but also a ninja? Why is Storm not simply a mutant of color, but an African witch-priestess? As comics great Dwayne McDuffie said, “You only had two types of characters available for children. You had the stupid angry brute and the he’s-smart-but-he’s-black characters.” There’s certainly more roles for a non-white characters now than when he said that in 1993, but most super hero comics are written about characters that were invented decades ago. By recoloring the comics, we can grandfather characters into the Marvel Universe who are not defined by their race.

Before and after comparison of Emma Frost.

Simply changing the skin color of the mutants obviously doesn’t address all of the issues around privilege in the Marvel Universe. The visual and narrative sexism that permeates superhero comics remains intact. Some characteristics of white characters also become negative stereotypes when applied to non-white characters. Wolverine is a symbol of wild, untamed, white male power, but when I recolor his skin to imagine him as a person of color, his snarling, predatory aggression reads as a stereotype of wild black men. This is a great demonstration of the way that white male characters are free to inhabit any role, whereas centuries of accumulated stereotypes shape the way we understand people of color in fiction***.

An edited image from the series X-Men of Color.

Promoters of the X-Men have spent years trying to convince audiences that these white characters are tapping into the struggle of black Americans. Strange as the substitution of white men for black activists may seem, it’s not unique. Fantasy universes often comment on social issues through the veil of imaginary prejudices****. My goal is that by looking at these images people will question whether an invented minority is really the best way to understand our country’s history and practice of race-based violence.

You can find a few more images at my website.)

Other resources related to this issue:
More NonSense: No More Mutants by Michael Buntag http://nonsensicalwords.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-nonsense-no-more-mutants.html
We Have The Power To Change MARVEL and DC Comics: Support Diversity, Support Miles! by Jay Deitcher http://www.unleashthefanboy.com/editorial/we-have-the-power-to-change-marvel-and-dc-comics-support-diversity-support-miles/44986

* The most appropriate metaphor for the original Stan Lee comics is probably invisible dimensions of power such as LGBT issues or religion. In the original comics, the X-Men hide their mutations in order to pass as humans (Angel uses belts to strap his wings down under a suit coat). In later generations, some of the mutants are visibly mutated to the point they could never pass as humans.
** Shyminsky also notes that recent generations of X-Men writers have reacted to the politics of appropriation in the series’ history. He cites Grant Morrison’s U-Men as an example.
***I think it’s interesting that the same characteristics that make Wolverine a white male icon are also regressive stereotypes of black men.
****I often think of house-elf slavery in Harry Potter, but it actually starts much earlier:

Cosplaying As Unsuccessful Escapism: Avoiding Something We Can’t Avoid

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Shonté Daniels

To cosplay means to become a human representation of a character. It demands full commitment to a transformation of any kind, from human to alien, from male to female, from pale to the darkest brown. It differs from Halloween, where a trick-or-treater walks up to a door, rings a door bell, chants her phrase and is greeted back by, “who are you supposed to be?” There is no supposing. You are no longer yourself; instead, you are the new expression of your character. It is an escape, a well needed one, from the world’s occasional lifelessness.

Unfortunately, escaping is easier for some, impossible for others. Last Halloween, I decided to break my tradition of telling myself I am too old to dress up. I spent a good deal of time and money on a great costume. I wanted to be Zero Suit Samus. The costume would be simpler to make than other costumes; I’m about the same shape as her (thin), and because her suit is only a blue jumpsuit with minor designs, I knew the work would not be strenuous. I bought the jumpsuit online, and used markers to design it as closely to Samus’s as possible. Obviously, my thrown-together costume would not be as unerring as other’s who have spent months on their designs, but I knew that anyone who was familiar with the bounty hunter would see herself in me.

However, I made one alteration: Samus’s hair. I decided to match my own hair color, black; I felt uncomfortable sporting a blonde wig on my brown head. I wanted to be Samus, but I also wanted a shade that complemented me, in the same way that blonde hair seems to suit Samus. Perhaps if I were white, wearing a wig that didn’t match my own hair color would not have felt so distressing, but knowing that Black people with naturally blonde hair are in the minority, I felt the need to conform, to reject the idea that I could, for one night only, be a perfect blonde. I couldn’t step out of my race and accept the costume, and neither could those around me.

The change in the design sparked a change in how others saw me. Walking around in my costume, I was not Samus; I was “Dark Samus,” an evil version of the hero I hoped to be. Eventually, I accepted my fate as the darker, evil villain, but I wondered how different the scenario would have been if I wore a blonde wig. Clothing and accessories are things I can adjust: skin color is not. Perhaps if my wig was blonde, the conversion from Black college student to Samus would have been more palpable—not only for others, but myself — but I believe even if I wore a matching wig, I still would not have been Samus. I still would be different.

If I limited myself to only black videogame female characters, I’d be stuck with Storm, a variety of Grand Theft Auto side characters, and other people with slightly darker skin tones who gamers have assumed to be black. (I don’t think Ganondorf is black, sorry). Sure, black male characters are more abundant, but if being darker than Samus made me “Dark Samus,” than a black male character will make me a female, male character. I still won’t be the same.

I don’t blame my skin tone for my unsuccessful attempt to escape like other cosplayers; rather, I blame the inability to understand the hardship of the dark skinned costumer. There is a desire to stick within someone’s race, not only from those around the cosplayer but sometimes from the cosplayer herself. If we were to think about forcing races to only dress as characters that match their own ethnicity, how many options would non-white people have? What about abiding by the same gender?

In order to increase the acceptance of interracial cosplayers, we need two things: First, we need more diverse protagonists. By diverse, I do not mean a customizable character. When given the option of creating their own protagonists, gamers will usually design a character similar to themselves. Who doesn’t want to see a version of yourself killing enemies and earning money? The fantasy is not far-fetched, but it prevents any use of creativity. Developers have the ability to create powerful, memorable, and influential people within their art. I want a Black Nathan Drake, a Latina Laura Croft.

Cosplaying, as big as a community as it may be, is really a small part of a greater community of gamers, developers and artists. And it’s all connected, a system working together. Diversifying cosplay can be encouraged if we ask for more diverse characters and force gamers to actively stray from their comfort zone. Currently, there are far more successful developers willing to adhere to the status quo than to part ways. The male, white, brown-haired, muscular, emotion-less protagonist seems to be here to stay. I believe this emphasis on this type of hero is why darker-skinned cosplayers receive criticism. This isn’t to say developers are racist and think dark-skinned people cannot be protagonists; this is to say, however, that there are so many white protagonists that any other skin tone is surprising.

There is no denying that the white, male character is still seen as the universal figure, one everyone can try to relate to. Video games are still at a point where a game featuring a female protagonist is still controversial; a game with a non-white lead, while ground-breaking and exciting for some, will be terrifying for the many who are xenophobic. There are other stories to be told, and different characters will allow for that exploration and contemplation of different cultures.

Eventually, non-white characters will no longer be seen as a specialty, as a risky task a developer placed upon himself. Then, the non-white hero will be admired, like any other character. The admiration will move to the cosplayers who wish to design costumes for their favorite characters, no matter the race. A break from the status quo, a re-envisioning and new abundance of diverse protagonists (minor characters, side characters, and everything in between) will give me, and others, more characters that may look closer in skin tone; More importantly, it will push those who have not cosplayed outside of their race to do so. There will be more interracial cosplaying, and more need for acceptance. Before we can get there, though, we need a push. The push is what we need for a progressive future in gaming, comics and other media forms.

A break from the status quo, a re-envisioning and new abundance of broader protagonists (minor characters, side characters, and everything in between) will give me, and others, more characters that may look closer in skin tone, but more importantly, will push those who have not cosplayed outside of their race to do so. Basically, an increase in differently designed characters will make more people interracially cosplay. More cosplay will lead to more acceptance. But none of this can happen without a shift from the norm.

But in order to achieve this push, we will need a wider range of artists creating these characters. In this case, I’m pointing towards video game developers, but we should not neglect our writers, cinematographers and artists. If the current developers cannot embrace the change in culture, then we need new developers. Since the introduction of technology and computer science, white males have dominated the field. While their contributions have been unequivocally necessary, they cannot represent an array of people without help from others.

A broader group of developers will lead to broader representation within games, an increase in diverse characters, and an increase in different costumes to design and parade in. I don’t want to be limited to only Black characters, nor do I want others to believe interracial cosplaying to be offensive. I would rather like to invite others to cosplay whatever they desire, because it is their choice who they wish to represent. I admire the white Garcian Smith, the lighter skinned Elena, but we must remember that they are just Garcian Smith and Elena. Race specificity is not required. Once more people start cosplaying out of their race, more will accept the fact that I was not Dark Samus; I was Samus.

Race and the Risks of ‘Kiddie Garbage’ Cartooning

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Qiana Whitted

The index to the Indie Comics vs. Context roundtable is here.
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“Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible.” – From General Standards Part C of the 1954 Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America

One of the consequences of the CMAA “Comics Code” of 1954 was that industry artists, writers, publishers, and distributors stopped taking risks when it came to race. At least, for a while. The slippery language of the “religion” section of General Standards Part C was broad enough that even the most tentative efforts to find an audience for increasingly complex, multi-dimensional images of blackness were scaled back. For several years, as the Civil Rights Movement transformed the social and political landscape of America, the mainstream comic book industry erred on the side of caution. (And I’m not just talking about those infamous beads of sweat.)

We know, of course, that the anxieties surrounding the Comics Code Authority’s strict guidelines opened up a space that mid-1960s underground comix would seek to fill. As Leonard Rifas states, “comix artists often tried to outdo each other in violating the hated Code’s restrictions,” deploying irony, satire, and caricature – notably, “extreme racial stereotypes” – to assert their freedom of expression.

In an interview from Ron Mann’s 1988 documentary Comic Book Confidential, R. Crumb explains:

We didn’t have anybody standing over us saying, “No, you can’t draw this. You can’t show this, you can’t make fun of Catholics… you can’t make fun of this or that.” We just drew whatever we wanted in the process. Of course we had to break every taboo first and get that over with, you know: drawing racist images, any sexual perversion that came to your mind, making fun of authority figures, all that. We had to get past all that and really get down to business.

Small press and indie comics creators continue to adhere to this countercultural checklist nearly sixty years later, gleefully undermining each new generation’s standards of good taste and decency with new artistic infractions. But Crumb’s approach to what he refers to as “absolute freedom” in the above quote does not adequately account for the risks taken by many African American artists and writers for whom the constraints, the taboos, and the violations differ. For me, then, examining indie comics and cartoonists in a larger contextual way means recognizing that there is more than just one Comics Code when it comes to race. And it means taking seriously the complex social and aesthetic tensions that black creators must navigate in order to exercise their own rights to free expression, even when they can’t get over or get past all that.

Cartoonist Barry Caldwell’s semi-autobiographical character Gilbert Nash is reprimanded in the 1970s strip above for making “kiddie garbage.” The regulating body standing over him in this instance belongs to an acquaintance that doubles as the physical manifestation of the cartoonist’s self-doubts. Her pointing fingers and exclamations intrude furiously into his drawing: “You should be out on the streets making great art about the black experience!”

Caldwell illustrates how an entrenched politics of racial respectability intersects with ongoing debates within black communities over the social function of art. Comics are derided by the woman in the strip as a frivolous medium through which white cartoonists are afforded the luxury of feelings, but a treacherous, irresponsible choice for a black artist with a greater obligation to his people. This is what is at stake when the chastising voice says, in other words: “No, you can’t draw this.” And yet four panels into exposing what is presumably a private exchange, Gilbert has already claimed his existence as a comic artist during the Black Arts Movement, rebuffing the viewer’s objectifying gaze with a question of his own. Taboo is drawing one’s self into being as an indie black cartoonist.

This is the context that shapes my reading of the comics of Jennifer Cruté. The two collected volumes of her comic strip, Jennifer’s Journal: The Life of a SubUrban Girl, feature autobiographical sketches of her upbringing in New Jersey suburbs as well as her life as a freelance illustrator in New York. With round, expressive black and white cartoon figures, Cruté’s characters appear to come from a charmed world where “ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible.” The wide faces tilt back and break easily into open-mouthed grins and scowls. Her freckled persona wears teddy bear overalls, while an older brother’s Afro parts on the side, Gary Coleman-style. Like the cursive “I” that is dotted with hearts on the title page, the comic adopts a style more closely associated with the playfulness of a schoolgirl’s junior high notebook. The title foregrounds the space of socio-economic privilege and gentrification that her family occupies during the 1980s complete with Cabbage Patch Dolls, family vacations to Disney World, and copies of Ebony and Life side by side on the coffee table.

Race introduces a source of friction that impacts Cruté’s decision to represent her experience as a young black girl through caricature. There are plenty of comic strips that depict the lives of children, but much like Ollie Harrington, Jackie Ormes, or more recently, Aaron McGruder, Jennifer’s Journal uses children to explore the absurdity of racism and the means through which blackness is socially constructed. She traces her earliest affection for Kermit the Frog, for instance, to the episode of “The Muppet Show” when she mistook guest Harry Belafonte for puppeteer Jim Henson. And in scenes that take place down South, fears of lynching and racial violence dominate the story’s action, while the narrative turns to everyday micro-aggressions and more subtle humiliations to capture her own encounter with racism in the suburbs.

The first volume’s cover image further aligns Cruté’s work with the confessional mode of popular small press and indie comics; a young African American girl nervously pulls down the pants of a plush toy bunny, while surrounding her are other undressed stuffed animals posed in various sexual positions. The fact that young Jennifer’s inspiration comes from an art history book open to a painting of a nude Adam and Eve speaks to the notion that visual images have the power to confer an uninhibited sense of expressiveness and wicked curiosity. Likewise when her reflections turn to religion and sin, Cruté confesses her nightly struggle to abstain from masturbation. She portrays the temptation as she tries to go to sleep beneath a pictorial thought balloon that recalls the image from the book’s cover, although this time the nude Edenic bodies that entice her to “Come on, Jenn! Touch it!” are created in her own brown-skinned image.

My point here is that the push and pull of creative freedom and self-regulation play out in Jennifer’s Journal on multiple registers. Though warnings mark the front and back cover to alert readers that the book is “NOT recommended for children,” the comic’s aesthetic choices incorporate cautionary measures that gesture toward the kind of “instructive and wholesome” entertainment that the Comics Code Authority sought to preserve. In an author’s note, she writes: “I draw simple characters with round figures to soften the complex and contradictory life situations I depict.” But despite this stated intention, I can’t help but see a rewarding motley of signifiers in the comic – some that soften, others that rankle and surprise. The comic playfully mocks both the demand for racial respectability and the longing for a vision of reality that treats frank discussions about racism and sexuality as inappropriate.

I have tried to be careful not to suggest that black artists and writers are the only ones entitled to complex images of blackness in comics, nor are they the final arbiters of how best to represent and confront racism. As Darryl Ayo points out in his post about Benjamin Marra’s Lincoln Washington: “People are going to do what they’re going to do.” But as Darryl goes on to suggest, there should be a more meaningful, substantive awareness of historical context in our interpretations of comics that explore racial conflict. I believe we should also ask tougher questions about how and why particular notions of absolute freedom are idealized in underground, indie, and small press comics. And why there isn’t more room in these discussions for the “kiddie garbage” of Jennifer Cruté and the other creative risks that black comics creators are taking right now.

Isaac Butler on Perceiving Race

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Noah Berlatsky

Isaac Butler from a recent comments thread drops some science on perceptions of race:

Basically, our brains have evolved to do an enormous amount of automatic processing of and reacting to simuli and life experience. They do this through a few different processes, but they mainly involve creating cateogories, associations between these categories and what get are called “schema,” which are essentially stories our brain tells itself without our conscious knowledge.

The associations and stories we have often involve categories of people, which we call stereotyping (it doesn’t have a negative connotation in psych circles). A lot of stereotyping is harmless. How do you know without having to think about it that a large, bald, fat human that’s crying probably doesn’t need a diaper change but a tiny, bald, fat human does? How do you know that a black rectangle that rings is a phone and not a wallet? it’s all these kinds of processes.

Anyway, not all of our associations are harmless or value neutral, often they involve preferences (when they’re positive) or biases (when they’re negative) about people in certain groups. Simply put, we have a story about them in our heads that we do not realize we have.

This whole phenomenon, one where our decision making and POV is affected by prejudices ovcuring at the unconscious level, is called Implicit BIas. It’s not limited to race and it’s not limited to the United States. It is, in fact, part of the human condition. It also isn’t a moral failing. The majority of white people in this country consciously hold egalitarian values. This is why explicit measures of bias and prejudice basically have no predicative value as to what people will actually do.

Implicit measures, on the other hand, do tend to predict behavior in experimental settings. The most famous of these is the IAT, which you can actually take yourself at projectimplicit.net. The IAT tests categorical associations through reaction times.

Anyway, this is long-winded, but there’s decades now of scientific evidence as to the validity of implicit bias, its predicative power, etc. and so forth. There is also considerable evidence that believing oneself to be objective actually causes people to act with more rather than less bias. There is some evidence that being aware of implicit bias, coupled with context-specific interventions, can help safeguard our decision making processes from implicit bias’s effects.

This is why color-blindness is such a pernitious idea. It’s actually the opposite of what we need. It’s the delusion that we’re objective. And what the Right does is talk about color-blindness through one side of its mouth while stoking White racial anxiety with the other. So they take race off the table as a valid topic for discussion (“playing the race card”) while also talking about it in ways guaranteed to panic Whites. For an example of this, look at Fox’s coverage of the Zimmerman verdict.

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