Do Racism and Comic Books Go Hand in Hand?

TsunamiWombat

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Uhh... You realize, most americans aren't white. Or even "American". This is a country full of immigrants.

Also don't forget one of the New X-Men, Dust I think? Is a muslim girl who goes around in full abaiya.
 

Carlston

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When many of these comic started, white males were the majority. And some of these span over what 80 years? You cater to who has the money and who has the buying number to keep the presses rolling.

Now a days it would be nice to see a branching out.... but enough of the forcing old superheros to become black or Eskimo lesbians...just god sake make new ones.
 

Hurr Durr Derp

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Meh, it's not something that's exclusive to comic books. Movies, TV shows, videogames, and even books released in Western countries have a white male protagonist more often than not. It's partially because most of the authors are white males and partially because most of the audience are white males. There's nothing racist about it.
 

Vaer

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People are really starting to annoy me, they seem to not even understand what racism means anymore and apply it to anything just so they get attention and feel as if they care, racism is hate of a certain race, refusing rights to someone because of race, etc. the fact that the people that make comics have more white characters then black is not fucking racist in any way, it is their right to have whichever characters they want (it's not like the portray all blacks or other races in a bad manner and the white people as good), guess what ? .. there are far more white people then black people in the US so of course there will be more white heroes, it's like the people that say manga artists from japan are racist for not having many blacks .. well there aren't many blacks in japan so of course the artist will create what is familiar to him and what he feels more people will relate to.
 

T3chn0s1s

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TsunamiWombat said:
Uhh... You realize, most americans aren't white. Or even "American". This is a country full of immigrants.

Also don't forget one of the New X-Men, Dust I think? Is a muslim girl who goes around in full abaiya.
I would... Actually like to see your numbers on that. o_O By the last census, to the best of my knowledge, 64% of americans who responded were white non-Hispanic. If you count the hispanic individuals who are still white, it's somewhere nearer to 80%. If we assume that the extra 15% needed for minorities to outnumber the white majority were not counted for various reasons, and assume a proportionate number of whites weren't, we'd have to have vaguely another 150 million people that aren't being counted.

I could do the math with census numbers, but I don't want to. Just saying... I'd like to see those numbers.
 

hurfdurp

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Knight Templar said:
I don't think that is racism per se, its not ideal for sure, but not racist either. Is it discrimination for most video game protagonists to be male? Not really, its just that is what is known to sell.

They are not holding up a group of people and saying "they are bad" or "they are good", its just a lack of diversity. That is a problem, but I don't think its racism, because that would require intent.
I agree, this makes a lot of sense.
 

GloatingSwine

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PedroSteckecilo said:
and don't forget Black Panther a.k.a Marvel's Batman...
Marvel's Batman is Moon Knight.

Though even your post shows something, Black characters are second stringers and sidekicks, and never more. When they shot Steve Rogers they should have had Eli Bradley take on the role of Cap and stuck with him.
 

GothmogII

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Apr 6, 2008
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Has any one mentioned that the word racism didn't come up in the article till the end, when it stopped talking about Mr.Brvoort? The quote said:

"Because we're an American company whose primary distribution is centered around America, the great majority of our existing audience seems to be white American males ... whenever your leads are white American males, you've got a better chance of reaching more people overall. "
He did not say that comics are inherently racist, but that because many comics cater to a pre-dominantly white audience, that protagonists in the main are white too. I know Mr.Westbrook was probably just going along with the how the article linked spun things.

But, I fail to see how you come to the conclusions the article makes (it's barely an article at that) that this market to appeal to a specific audience = racism.
 

For.I.Am.Mad

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All I know is that I recently read a comic that calls Nelson Mandela a terrorist and then has Storm of the X-men go 'Yup'. Then I read another comic that has Booster Gold YELLING at Cyborg 'At least we acted like real human beings.' Yeah, no hidden messages there.

Of course this nothing compared to games industry. The KKK are more progressive than the people in the games and comics industry. And don't even get me started on Hollywood.
 

One of Many

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Qufang said:
Anyone first think this was going to be about X-Men and mutants in general in Marvel comics? :p
I did.

Anyways, I think comics being racist is a load of crap. For one thing, a lot of the comic super heroes aren't even human but some humanoid aliens (like the Silver Surfer, Ganymede, Gamora ) or a gods (Thor, Valkyrie and Blader) or some non-human from earth (Andromeda).

Secondly, there are plenty of non-American heroes; Colossus (russian), Maggott (South African), Sasquatch (Polish Canadian), Echo AKA Ronin (Hispanic Native American), Sunfire (Japanese), Sunspot (Brazilian), Armor (Japanese), Captain Britain (English), Banshee (Irish), Wolverine (Canadian), Araña (Mexican), Elektra (Greek), Karma (Vietnamese), La Lunatica (Mexican) Pixie (Welsh), Red Sonja (Russian or Ukrainian) or Aurora (Canadian).

All that was from just picking out random names of Marvel superheros that looked interesting.