“Said it was blue
When your blood was red
That’s how ya got a bullet blasted through your head”
-Zack de la Rocha, who I quote all the time, “Bullet in Your Head” from RAtM
News recently surfaced showing that it is possible Mike Brown, who was shot in Ferguson, didn’t rob that store at all. Strange Fruit indeed.
Thinking about Ferguson took me back to my discussion–which you can find in the archive here– about riots and why under-represented people have to harness the power of anger and outrage.
There’s a related issue that I sometimes talk about that links to my more recent posts: representation in popular media. More specifically, in games and comics (and movies). I’m 40. I grew up with the second iteration of the X-men, with Batman and the Super Friends era Justice League, with the dawn of the Punisher as a major figure. I loved Spider-Man and Daredevil.
Know what those characters have in common?
Let’s look at them.
There’s one Black person: Storm
There’s one native person (amazingly enough). It’s Thunderbird, who died in the next issue)
There’s a few women, thankfully.
There’s an alien (Martian Manhunter, not pictured, but also technically Superman)
There’s a robot (Red Tornado)
But there’s a BUNCH of white people.
I love super heroes. I always have. But if I wanted to see myself, racially, I had Thunderbird (who died as a function of his Native pride), his brother Warpath who came later, and Apache Chief, who just got big when he said something in Apache.
Later there were some compelling Native characters. But for every SCALPED saga (which enough people will decry anyway) there’s a space-cowboy Indian like BraveStar. For every Puma (the Spidey villain who was actually pretty cool) there’s a Tonto.
When talking about my problems finding Native gamers early in my research, an older, well respected white scholar told me to go to a casino.
That’s what I deal with. My culture is considered dead, and people think they pay homage by lampooning the historical versions.
Meanwhile if I want to see ME in a Marvel Comic, I get the short lived reboot of Red Wolf or the X-Force version of Warpath.
Does that seem… fair? Does that seem like proper representation?