The Minority Displacement Thread

[wano]

my question for everyone is how do we bring forth the change we want to see? what active things can we do as readers to hold marvel and more specifically the xoffices accountable for this lack of diversity and poor representation of people of color?

X men has this issue of being considered diverse or a stand in for diversity and inclusion because technically speaking even the whitest richest good looking mutant is part of a prosecuted minority and victim of oppression, so the metaphor works for for hot handsome angel and cyclops as much as it works for future cop minority bishop.

[Silver Fang]

my question for everyone is how do we bring forth the change we want to see? what active things can we do as readers to hold marvel and more specifically the xoffices accountable for this lack of diversity and poor representation of people of color?

Only things I can think of is writing to them via their site to complain.

Then there'd be banning together & not buying any of their books. But, I think you'd have possible greater luck doing the first option than this one. lol

[Chaos Reigns]

X men has this issue of being considered diverse or a stand in for diversity and inclusion because technically speaking even the whitest richest good looking mutant is part of a prosecuted minority and victim of oppression, so the metaphor works for for hot handsome angel and cyclops as much as it works for future cop minority bishop.

That's exactly why it doesn't work for Bishop or any other non white mutant. They would face multiple forms of discrimination and persecution. The X-men used to show that.

[Sundowhn]

That's exactly why it doesn't work for Bishop or any other non white mutant. They would face multiple forms of discrimination and persecution. The X-men used to show that.

Incoming wall o' text.

The inherent problem with that is that you're delving into different stories in different worlds -- the fictional world of the X-Men or the real world.

In the X-Men's world, you don't see much in the way of stories about real world oppression on the news. They don't touch on Black Lives Matter, or Islamic Mosques being burned or gay kids being targeted with violence. For all we know, as things have been shown in recent years with people of all races banded together in hating on mutants, there is no longer significant human bias against human minorities. The bigotry is saved for mutants, in the X-Universe. If it's brought up at all, like a reference to concentration camps with Magneto, or Kitty's infamous N word dialogue from God Love, Man Kills, it's to draw a parallel to what mutants are going through. The reason for that is because mutants were created to be a fictional minority group and the X-Men are fictional members of that minority group who battle the unwarranted hate and fear directed at them. It's a metaphor.

You have mutants who can choose to hide what they are that run parallel with real world minority groups based on religion or orientation, then you have mutants who cannot choose to hide what they are to parallel racial minorities.

Now, before anyone gets angry with me, let me finish.

I do think real world minority characters are underrepresented in the X-Men, as well as across the board in comics in general. I expect it's chiefly because of the era in which most of the characters were originally created and the fact that fans, especially of Marvel and DC, don't want to read about some new guy, they want to read about Thor or Iron Man or Wolverine or whatever. People interested in reading about the new guys tend to gravitate to Indie titles, which focus on new material, rather than classic.

There are quite a few minority characters that exist across the X-Men line that haven't made the cut long-term, though. Probably the most diverse team ever created were the New Mutants, but only one of their number truly made it out of the kiddie class and into the Big League, and her hold is tenuous, at best, right now. (Magick)

What we have are a handful of well developed minority characters, significantly more that were once developed but left to languish years ago, and the rest fall into tokenism.

Four characters that I really love in the franchise happen to be minorities. I say "happen to be" because them being a minority isn't the specific reason I love the characters. I love the characters for being great characters.

Storm and Bishop
They're interesting, well-developed characters of color who are mutants. Bishop has suffered abysmally, story wise, but I hold out hope he'll one day find the right writer and be fixed. Lord knows he needs it. If ever Marvel was going to relaunch Excalibur, for example, Bishop would be a perfect choice for the by-the-book element in the original cast....the straight faced man as a backdrop for the humor associated with the title.

Storm is tragically marginalized these days and I think it boils down to no writer having a clue as to how to write the character correctly. (Amusingly enough, I thought Jason Aaron, in the Quest for Nightcrawler arc did a pretty good job of capturing the substance of Storm and not relying on feats, as most writers seem to want to do with her.)

The other two are more controversial, and open another portion of the subject at hand called "not my minority".

Nightcrawler and Psylocke

eth·nic·i·ty
noun
the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.

Nightcrawler is ethnically a gypsy from central Europe. If you've ever lived in central Europe, you're probably familiar with just how harshly this group is treated, as in they still have their camps burned down and are chased away from towns by the authorities . It's socially accepted bigotry, as I witnessed first hand when my youngest child was in kindergarten, in listening to her teacher talk.
The character's heritage is overshadowed by the fact that he looks like a blue devil. Why not use his heritage more, like Claremont did?

Psylocke was raised a white woman of privilege, but she's been in an Asian body for many years now. Does that completely discount her? It appears to, based on what I've read from other fans. I mean, I'm not defending the original story line or anything, but she is actually a race other than white, and she's also bisexual. Again, neither are addressed, overly much. Why not?

This is where we get into the territory of not my minority group. Is there really a right or a wrong answer to this? Isn't diversity about inclusion of all groups? Why discount those minority groups that don't represent what you're personally interested in? I see it happen all the time.

The final thing is this, in response to what to do about it. In my opinion, if you scream and demand diversity, the response is an uptick on token appearances, or at least that's what I've seen so far. Why was Iceman written to be gay? Because Bendis needed a token minority in his classically all white O5 group, after such an outcry over lack of diversity in the line-up. That's what I believe, anyway. With as little as Storm has done in Gold, she seems more like a token black character on the cast, rather than an A-list X-Man. I'm sorry, but that's not good enough.

In X-Men Red, three of the cast are a part of real life minority groups. Instead of people being excited on these boards for the book, I see them bashing the cast and whining about it. (Now if this ends up as another team book that is written like a solo with supporting, I'll probably join the whining. )

Maybe instead of complaining to Marvel and demanding more characters who'll just end up in limbo, it would be better to say we'd really like the ones we have to be used and a significant part of the franchise once more? Make them great characters again, don't just make more lackluster characters.

That's my 2 cents on it.

[nx01a]

If we want diversity, it appears Champions is the book to read... even if it's populated with 'diverse' versions of straight white male heroes.

[Confuzzled]

Daken is problematic af. Bisexual and a villain whose powers make it easier to sleep with. It's a stereotype that only feeds into the worst ideas about bisexuals.

That's true for a bunch of Marvel's bi/gay characters: Romeo, Eros, Ben Deeds with his "manipulative" powers, Mystique, Chameleon (established to have had feelings for Peter Parker) etc.

It's another side effect of almost exclusively straight (usually white and male too) writers handling LGBT characters.

[Confuzzled]

Only things I can think of is writing to them via their site to complain.

Then there'd be banning together & not buying any of their books. But, I think you'd have possible greater luck doing the first option than this one. lol

I think organizing a Twitter campaign and getting a hashtag trending would be the most effective. It needs proper planning and execution though.

[Chaos Reigns]

I think organizing a Twitter campaign and getting a hashtag trending would be the most effective. It needs proper planning and execution though.

What are things a good Twitter campaign needs to last?

[Confuzzled]

What are things a good Twitter campaign needs to last?

A catchy hashtag like #KeepIrisBlack (a successful hashtag to ensure Iris West was played by a black actress in the DCEU), a well organized core group of tweeters properly explaining the goals and objectives of the hashtag. It entails clearly defining what the current issues are, why they need to be solved, and what hopes we have for the future. Fan art and collages of the minority characters we want to support would be great to retweet along with the hashtag and its goals.

I also think socially progressive geek sites like The Mary Sue, Black Nerd Problems, Birth. Death. Movies , Uproxx and io9 will co-operate in bringing awareness to this movement to uplift ill-treated minority characters in the X-Books. It's doable if enough people are passionate enough.

[DragonsChi]

Incoming wall o' text.

The inherent problem with that is that you're delving into different stories in different worlds -- the fictional world of the X-Men or the real world.

In the X-Men's world, you don't see much in the way of stories about real world oppression on the news. They don't touch on Black Lives Matter, or Islamic Mosques being burned or gay kids being targeted with violence. For all we know, as things have been shown in recent years with people of all races banded together in hating on mutants, there is no longer significant human bias against human minorities. The bigotry is saved for mutants, in the X-Universe. If it's brought up at all, like a reference to concentration camps with Magneto, or Kitty's infamous N word dialogue from God Love, Man Kills, it's to draw a parallel to what mutants are going through. The reason for that is because mutants were created to be a fictional minority group and the X-Men are fictional members of that minority group who battle the unwarranted hate and fear directed at them. It's a metaphor.

You have mutants who can choose to hide what they are that run parallel with real world minority groups based on religion or orientation, then you have mutants who cannot choose to hide what they are to parallel racial minorities.

Now, before anyone gets angry with me, let me finish.

I do think real world minority characters are underrepresented in the X-Men, as well as across the board in comics in general. I expect it's chiefly because of the era in which most of the characters were originally created and the fact that fans, especially of Marvel and DC, don't want to read about some new guy, they want to read about Thor or Iron Man or Wolverine or whatever. People interested in reading about the new guys tend to gravitate to Indie titles, which focus on new material, rather than classic.

There are quite a few minority characters that exist across the X-Men line that haven't made the cut long-term, though. Probably the most diverse team ever created were the New Mutants, but only one of their number truly made it out of the kiddie class and into the Big League, and her hold is tenuous, at best, right now. (Magick)

What we have are a handful of well developed minority characters, significantly more that were once developed but left to languish years ago, and the rest fall into tokenism.

Four characters that I really love in the franchise happen to be minorities. I say "happen to be" because them being a minority isn't the specific reason I love the characters. I love the characters for being great characters.

Storm and Bishop
They're interesting, well-developed characters of color who are mutants. Bishop has suffered abysmally, story wise, but I hold out hope he'll one day find the right writer and be fixed. Lord knows he needs it. If ever Marvel was going to relaunch Excalibur, for example, Bishop would be a perfect choice for the by-the-book element in the original cast....the straight faced man as a backdrop for the humor associated with the title.

Storm is tragically marginalized these days and I think it boils down to no writer having a clue as to how to write the character correctly. (Amusingly enough, I thought Jason Aaron, in the Quest for Nightcrawler arc did a pretty good job of capturing the substance of Storm and not relying on feats, as most writers seem to want to do with her.)

The other two are more controversial, and open another portion of the subject at hand called "not my minority".

Nightcrawler and Psylocke

eth·nic·i·ty
noun
the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.

Nightcrawler is ethnically a gypsy from central Europe. If you've ever lived in central Europe, you're probably familiar with just how harshly this group is treated, as in they still have their camps burned down and are chased away from towns by the authorities . It's socially accepted bigotry, as I witnessed first hand when my youngest child was in kindergarten, in listening to her teacher talk.
The character's heritage is overshadowed by the fact that he looks like a blue devil. Why not use his heritage more, like Claremont did?

Psylocke was raised a white woman of privilege, but she's been in an Asian body for many years now. Does that completely discount her? It appears to, based on what I've read from other fans. I mean, I'm not defending the original story line or anything, but she is actually a race other than white, and she's also bisexual. Again, neither are addressed, overly much. Why not?

This is where we get into the territory of not my minority group. Is there really a right or a wrong answer to this? Isn't diversity about inclusion of all groups? Why discount those minority groups that don't represent what you're personally interested in? I see it happen all the time.

The final thing is this, in response to what to do about it. In my opinion, if you scream and demand diversity, the response is an uptick on token appearances, or at least that's what I've seen so far. Why was Iceman written to be gay? Because Bendis needed a token minority in his classically all white O5 group, after such an outcry over lack of diversity in the line-up. That's what I believe, anyway. With as little as Storm has done in Gold, she seems more like a token black character on the cast, rather than an A-list X-Man. I'm sorry, but that's not good enough.

In X-Men Red, three of the cast are a part of real life minority groups. Instead of people being excited on these boards for the book, I see them bashing the cast and whining about it. (Now if this ends up as another team book that is written like a solo with supporting, I'll probably join the whining. )

Maybe instead of complaining to Marvel and demanding more characters who'll just end up in limbo, it would be better to say we'd really like the ones we have to be used and a significant part of the franchise once more? Make them great characters again, don't just make more lackluster characters.

That's my 2 cents on it.

WOW! What a great post! I agree 95%

The Psylock thing about being really asian doesn't sit well with me. But thats it. Again GREAT post.

[Sutekh]

Constantly creating and discarding new minority characters seems to just be cluttering the place up, instead of building on what's already there. Trinary, from X-Men Red, feels like such an example. There are mutants from India (or Indian-American) already, who could be in that place. Timeslip/Rina Patel. Indra/whatever his name is. Thunderbird III/Neal Shara. Others I'm no doubt forgetting...

Psylocke was raised a white woman of privilege, but she's been in an Asian body for many years now. Does that completely discount her? It appears to, based on what I've read from other fans. I mean, I'm not defending the original story line or anything, but she is actually a race other than white, and she's also bisexual. Again, neither are addressed, overly much. Why not?

While I also don't much care for the Asian-washing of Betsy (instead of giving that development to Karma, who already was Asian, and a mutant, and a *psychic*, and working for her crimelord uncle Nguyen, and totally would have legitimately rocked that psychic ninja concept), I do think it's got story potential. People who don't know her are going to see a Japanese woman, and treat her the way they'd treat a Japanese woman, with no clue that she was born a rich blonde Brit, so if a writer wanted to explore the sorts of prejudice an Asian woman can face, that writer could certainly do so with Betsy, as readily as with someone who was born an Asian woman.

It's also an interesting sideways look at how trans people are treated, as if they are somehow 'fakers' or 'not really an X/Y' because they started their journey at a different place. Whether Betsy was born Asian or not, she's got not just the body of an Asian woman, but also the memories of that Asian woman (even if most of the killer instincts got filtered back to Kwannon when their brains got somewhat-less-entangled), so she's got at least memories of real-life experiences growing up Asian (and possibly a member of a demon-worshipping ninja assassin cult, so there's also that...).

Ooh, plot seed. Perhaps Kwannon saw something (a secret ritual?) during her past Hand life that could now be important to either stopping or greatly empowering the Hand, making Betsy, the last resting place of those Kwannon-memories, a hot commodity, with some Hand-foes being perfectly willing to kill her to keep that information from getting back to the Hand...

[Confuzzled]

Trinary seems like an interesting character but it's weird that Sapna, another Indian mutant who had potential introduced just two years prior, was used and then "discarded" by her own creator instead of being allowed to be given the Kitty/Jubilee treatment.

Gabby, another kid mutant introduced in the same year, appearing on the Red team makes Sapna's dispensability that much more apparent.

*Btw Indra's real name is Paras Gavaskar. Another minority mutant with tons of potential but whom most of the SWM writers couldn't care less about.

[Paleo_Rage]

Trinary seems like an interesting character but it's weird that Sapna, another Indian mutant who had potential introduced just two years prior, was used and then "discarded" by her own creator instead of being allowed to be given the Kitty/Jubilee treatment.

Gabby, another kid mutant introduced in the same year, appearing on the Red team makes Sapna's dispensability that much more apparent.

*Btw Indra's real name is Paras Gavaskar. Another minority mutant with tons of potential but whom most of the SWM writers couldn't care less about.

Sadly, many minority characters have been introduced as new people have taken the reign of an X men book but were not used again by others. I wish more writers were like Mike Carey. He took those new characters who were virtually blank slates and built them up. he did wonders for Indra, Trance, Loa..

Peter David made Decay, a black female mutant who manipulates moisture.. Where is she? Cipher is shown occasionally, Oya was riding wave but that has stopped, Prodigy is really displaced, I still miss Tag.. he didnt have to die, Kidogo did not have to die either as he would have been a great foil to Gentle.. They could have been roommates .. Sofia did not have to be depowered and whisked into limbo. Where is Flourish/Creep.. She should have at the school being mentored by Storm. Folks shouldn't just keep creating new minority characters and discarding them. Once they are made they need to be inserted into the narrative. Writers need to utilize whats already there and mix it in one or two of their own creations.

Hijack, Gold Balls, Velocidad and Triage all need to be used regularly.

[Tazpocalapse]

Honestly nothing will change. Does anyone remember the reply by then X-editor Daniel Ketchum "We have a abundance of blue characters? Just the thought of people of color possibly being apart of a cast that can draw from the entire spectrum of humanity is out of the realm of imagination in the X-verse.

Do you think that the people working on these comics don't notice the lack of POC in their books? If you bring this issue up people will feel like they are being forced to write minority characters. Now ask yourself do you want people that are not interested in the characters writing them?

The best bet for a minority character to appear is in the satelite books that actually had diverse casts at their inception. Unfortunately New Mutants and Gen X has been recast with less diversity ( in Generation X case gay males = diversity). Anyway i don't think the people running the show want to anger the Alt-right crowd that claims Marvel is SJW Hitler.

[wano]

Honestly nothing will change. Does anyone remember the reply by then X-editor Daniel Ketchum "We have a abundance of blue characters? Just the thought of people of color possibly being apart of a cast that can draw from the entire spectrum of humanity is out of the realm of imagination in the X-verse.

Do you think that the people working on these comics don't notice the lack of POC in their books? If you bring this issue up people will feel like they are being forced to write minority characters. Now ask yourself do you want people that are not interested in the characters writing them?

The best bet for a minority character to appear is in the satelite books that actually had diverse casts at their inception. Unfortunately New Mutants and Gen X has been recast with less diversity ( in Generation X case gay males = diversity). Anyway i don't think the people running the show want to anger the Alt-right crowd that claims Marvel is SJW Hitler.

Why would Marvel be afraid of the alt right crowd? Unless they're their main audience which I highly doubt