“I don’t want to have to constantly prove and re-prove myself”

It’s not surprising that the always up with the trends Barbie latest incarnation would be as a vlogger, but to see her use her platform to address racism? In a way that’s a lot better than most of the companies that paid lip service to BLM earlier this year?

You could argue that all this is a bit simplistic or question the motives of the company and people behind Barbie doing this, but to have a generation of kids watch and absorb this would be a good thing regardless.

Friday Funnies: Lighten Up

panel from Ronald Wimberlys Lighten Up

“Lighten Up” is a comic Ronald Wimberly created about his feelings when an editor asked him to lighten the skin tone of a character in a Wolverine comic. As told, it’s one of those incidents you could call micro aggressions, one of those moments where the (unconsciously) racist assumptions underpinning (American) society come to the fore. If you’re not subject to them they can be easily overlooked or dismissed, but as seen here, they do resonate.

What got me thinking is when Wimberly aks whether a black editor would’ve asked him to change that skin colour only to note that he’s never had a black editor in twelve years working in comics. Because Marvel has had black editors in the past; Christopher Priest and Dwayne McDuffie frex. But they’re still rare to non-existent enough at the big comics companies for somebody to be able to work for over a decade without ever encountering one. And that’s a worry, because without people of colour, black people in positions of power within comics, the concerns of their readers and creators of colour will always come second.

Apart from its message, I just like the comic itself. It can be hard not to make a non-fiction comic into a succession of talking heads and static shots with most information carried through the text but Wimberly succeeded admirably. If you just had the text to read you’d miss so much; the continuous juxtaposition with html colour codes frex, or his use of Manet’s Olympia, or that “pin the tail on the racist” panel, a great example of text and drawing contradicting each other.

Free speech isn’t consequence free

Bill Purcell is a volunteer at Comic Con International, apparantly on the committee for San Diego Comic Con, which as you know Bob, is the largest comic con in the English language area and possibly the world. He’s also a racist asshole who’s been aggressively tweeting about the Ferguson verdict ever since the grand jury reached its decision not to prosecute yesterday. It’s the standard entitle white man obnoxiousness coming out in public, a reflex action he can’t help, with of course the usual threats against people taking offence at him. Bigot gotta bigot.

Disappointing but not unexpected is some of the response he’s had. Rich Johnson is jealous:

We don’t have the same freedom of speech laws like the US does, and I wish we did. Part of defending free speech tends to be defending the speech of people you find abhorrent – otherwise what value does it have? I’m reminded of the ridiculous attempt from Lawrence O’Donnell to censor the free speech of Comic-Con organiser Jackie Estrada‘s husband, Batton Lash.

While Mark Waid and Tom Spurgeon argue people shouldn’t call for Purcell to be fired:

The whole thing sounds dumb, right? It is! But this is also an interesting thing. I agree with Mark Waid when he suggests here that calling for Purcell’s position or volunteer job or whatever based on expressions of stomach-turning dumbassery isn’t something that communities should do as a general rule. One hundred percent. But there’s a growing element in comics culture that feels differently, and I think most institutions have to account for that in some way. I also think there’s a line to be drawn between staking out a position, no matter how loathsome or stupid, and engaging with your customer base in a way that’s carries even a hint of threat, or is simply so unpleasant and bothersome so as to disrupt and distract someone from the business of their day.

Now I do understand where they’re coming from; the US comics field has had a great many traumatic experiences with censorship, from the original Comics Code Authority to the Friendly Franks prosecutions in the eighties and the first reflex is always to defend the right to free speech, no matter the content. But free speech isn’t consequence free speech and it’s not censorship to point out that somebody like Purcell isn’t helping the San Diego Comic Con more friendly toward people of colour.

And lord knows comics don’t need more problems with white male entitlement and hostility towards people of colour; it’s history in this regard is just as troubling as its censorship troubles have been, but self imposed. To have somebody who has been quite open in his ties to San Diego be able to spout more of this hatred without consequences just reinforces the idea that people of colour are unwelcome in comix. It makes the convention that less safe to visit, knowing such an outspoken bigot is involved, somebody who has actually been threatening people with violence as well. And those are not idle threats in a country where lynching as a white people’s passtime is still within living memory, while on average two black people are killed by cops each week.

There’s a choice here that we have to make. Either we make it clear by deeds as well as words that hatred and threats like Purcell’s have no place in comix, or we sacrifice the safety of people of colour, of women, on the altar of free speech, which always seems to favour the incrowd, the already connected, the white. Because of what he said and the way he said it, Purcell should be removed from any involvement with the Comic Con unless the con thinks the rights of a bigot to have his free speech be consequence free outweights the rights of people of colour to be safe at their convention.

Actual black nerd problems

Privilege is also, not having to worry about shit like this when going to conventions:

How the fuck is it that my Friday night Comic Con experience is hijacked by me doing the math on if I could get to my car with a giant, cartoonish sword strapped across my back? Why is this something that concerns me at all? It sure as hell didn’t concern the cool white dude who showed me his Levi-blade earlier. If I ran into him again and if he asked me if I picked one up myself, I wouldn’t know how to tell him about my reluctance to open myself up to possible harm. I wouldn’t know how to engage him on a level that says, “I’m glad we met and share an affinity for this same piece of art, but because I’m black and aware of the world around me, I don’t feel comfortable indulging myself at the same level you do.” It’s a tough conversation to have. It’s a tougher situation to articulate. It’s toughest though, just trying to live with that doubt in your head.

Hipster racism

Ironic racism, Lester Bangs nailed more than three decades ago:

Another reason for getting rid of all those little verbal barbs is that no matter how you intend them, you can’t say them without risking misinterpretation by some other bigoted asshole; your irony just might be his cup of hate. Things like the Creem articles and partydown exhibitionism represented a reaction against the hippie counterculture and what a lot of us regarded as its pious pussyfooting around questions of racial and sexual identity, questions we were quite prepared to drive over with bulldozers. We believed nothing could be worse, more pretentious and hypocritical, than the hippies and the liberal masochism in whose sidecar they Coked along, so we embraced an indiscriminate, half-joking and half-hostile mindlessness which seemed to represent, as Mark Jacobson pointed out in his Voice piece on Legs McNeil, a new kind of cool. “I don’t discriminate,” I used to laugh, “I’m prejudiced against everybody!”