I won’t dispute that there are some genuinely awful people masquerading as media critics on YouTube nowadays (coughcoughcriticaldrinkercoughnerdrotic), or that there is a chunk of the population who simply tune into their ragebait in search of opinions to plug into their brains. Those “media critics” could be comic book fans. I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch their channels. But if that were the sole driving force, why wasn’t there a conservative outcry when Nick Fury, who was white in some comics and black in others, was portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson in the MCU? I find it difficult to believe conservative talking heads would ever pass up an excuse to complain about something like that if there was any kernel of truth to it.
More importantly, why was there backlash against Ariel from people on the left who did not object to Miles Morales?
There absolutely was a conservative freak out over black Nick Fury. It happened when super hero comics were not full blown mainstream yet. Also before hyper centralized social media. So it wasn’t really a talking point outside of niche spaces. Like any specific anger, over a single character, it was drowned in the flood of the next outrages. After so many years it is now just who Nick Fury is, because he was black when super hero media truly broke into the mainstream. It is easier to get people mad about things they are used to, changing, rather than try to get them mad that Nick was made black before gen z really became the primary consumer of marvel media.
However, in 2001, it was a hot button issue at the comic book store. I heared many racist rants about it.
Okay. I’ll concede that first point, and that conservatives fit the meme perfectly. I’m pretty sure the meme isn’t exclusively talking about conservatives, though. What about the second point?
More than conservatives are racist. A LOT of people fall into racist practices without even understanding that they are. Just because you aren’t being intentional, doesn’t mean what you are doing isn’t racist. This is why systemic racism exists. People default to recognizing when something is happening to them, but not so much others. They do what is best for them, assuming it works best for everyone, and are unaware of the harm it does. They see that white characters get changed, because they notice things that affect white their own. Then they get mad, because their surface level understanding of whitewashing, isn’t enough to grasp that these are not the same thing. So they go “hey, why when make non-white white, bad, but when white made non-white, not bad?” They then don’t have the information, and critical thinking tools, on the subject, to understand eliminating representation of minority populations, in their society, does a lot of harm to those communities, that changing the odd majority figure out, does not.
I won’t dispute that there are some genuinely awful people masquerading as media critics on YouTube nowadays (coughcoughcriticaldrinkercoughnerdrotic), or that there is a chunk of the population who simply tune into their ragebait in search of opinions to plug into their brains. Those “media critics” could be comic book fans. I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch their channels. But if that were the sole driving force, why wasn’t there a conservative outcry when Nick Fury, who was white in some comics and black in others, was portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson in the MCU? I find it difficult to believe conservative talking heads would ever pass up an excuse to complain about something like that if there was any kernel of truth to it.
More importantly, why was there backlash against Ariel from people on the left who did not object to Miles Morales?
There absolutely was a conservative freak out over black Nick Fury. It happened when super hero comics were not full blown mainstream yet. Also before hyper centralized social media. So it wasn’t really a talking point outside of niche spaces. Like any specific anger, over a single character, it was drowned in the flood of the next outrages. After so many years it is now just who Nick Fury is, because he was black when super hero media truly broke into the mainstream. It is easier to get people mad about things they are used to, changing, rather than try to get them mad that Nick was made black before gen z really became the primary consumer of marvel media.
However, in 2001, it was a hot button issue at the comic book store. I heared many racist rants about it.
Okay. I’ll concede that first point, and that conservatives fit the meme perfectly. I’m pretty sure the meme isn’t exclusively talking about conservatives, though. What about the second point?
More than conservatives are racist. A LOT of people fall into racist practices without even understanding that they are. Just because you aren’t being intentional, doesn’t mean what you are doing isn’t racist. This is why systemic racism exists. People default to recognizing when something is happening to them, but not so much others. They do what is best for them, assuming it works best for everyone, and are unaware of the harm it does. They see that white characters get changed, because they notice things that affect white their own. Then they get mad, because their surface level understanding of whitewashing, isn’t enough to grasp that these are not the same thing. So they go “hey, why when make non-white white, bad, but when white made non-white, not bad?” They then don’t have the information, and critical thinking tools, on the subject, to understand eliminating representation of minority populations, in their society, does a lot of harm to those communities, that changing the odd majority figure out, does not.