How much has the X-Men as a reflection of real life minorities changed overtime?

[pkingdom]

Certainly, it doesn't have to be one or the other. The best series in Marvel right now know how to balance the two. For me, that's Unstoppable Wasp, Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales, Loki, and Moon Girl. Several of them ended recently and I'm still super sad about it.

[skyvolt2000]

Certainly, it doesn't have to be one or the other. The best series in Marvel right now know how to balance the two. For me, that's Unstoppable Wasp, Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales, Loki, and Moon Girl. Several of them ended recently and I'm still super sad about it.

Correct you can balance it.

You can show both sides of the coin.

If you got folks who can accept Thing, Devil Dino and others can accept mutants.

[Electricmastro]

Even with Claremont, things weren't that rosy, dramatic events happened, people died in gruesome ways, it's just that at the end of the issue, there was always some hope that things will get better and, above all, there wasn't this separation between mutants and non-mutants.

Also, there were mutant adventures like this one.

[pkingdom]

Bringing this thread back. Some of the stuff and comments about the latest X-men issue have given me pause. Reminds me of the 'using the rhetoric and struggles of minorities without actually telling the stories of those minorities'.

Someone commented about you could substitute the talk of mutants and schools with black people, and I just thought that's the kind of thing you could just do with black people instead. And having the talk about banks and schools and economic dominance for this goal come from a straight, white, ethnically Jewish man is just a whole host of unfortunate implications.

[Electricmastro]

Bringing this thread back. Some of the stuff and comments about the latest X-men issue have given me pause. Reminds me of the 'using the rhetoric and struggles of minorities without actually telling the stories of those minorities'.

Someone commented about you could substitute the talk of mutants and schools with black people, and I just thought that's the kind of thing you could just do with black people instead. And having the talk about banks and schools and economic dominance for this goal come from a straight, white, ethnically Jewish man is just a whole host of unfortunate implications.

Reminds me of how it was described to me that Doom Patrol is basically X-Men done better in terms of having less mutant domination dissonance to deal with and more insightful, structured analysis in regards to how a group gaining powers can cause them alienation and trauma, as well as being outcasted from society.

[Zelena]

Reminds me of how it was described to me that Doom Patrol is basically X-Men done better in terms of having less mutant domination dissonance to deal with and more insightful, structured analysis in regards to how a group gaining powers can cause them alienation and trauma, as well as being outcasted from society.

Well, I suppose they must have done something, don't they?

[Devaishwarya]

This is an interesting question, as there are changes to the metaphor and to how we perceive civil rights.

The biggest thing Hickman did is establish that mutants as a whole no longer want to be assimilated. It's no longer about people who want to be equal, but about people who see themselves as superior (in this case they have the special abilities to back it up) which changes the civil rights metaphor in interesting ways. It's closer to silicon valley billionaires than existing minority groups.

The inevitable arrival of mutants to the MCU is going to have to address what it means for the mutants to be emerging in a world where they haven't really been mentioned. This could change the metaphor from a persecuted group that has been around for a while to groups that have seemingly emerged recently (IE- people who identify as non-binary or asexual.)

This 678910

[Electricmastro]

Wow, that passage kind of summerizes all of X-men in one go. That's super apt.

There was also a Red Rocket story by George H. Appel from Captain Flight Comics #11 (February 1947, Ajax-Farrell) that talked about mutants as well, so indeed, it seems like the idea of mutants being rulers above everyone else goes way back:

[Electricmastro]

[Electricmastro]

[jwatson]

Reads like internalized racist propaganda to me.

The black man with their "Superior" bodies will one day try to rule over us.

Right now they are the minority but they will take our women and breed with them and try to become the majority.

The white man as we know it will go extinct as these "mutants" spread upon our lands.

[Huntsman Spider]

Reads like internalized racist propaganda to me.

The black man with their "Superior" bodies will one day try to rule over us.

Right now they are the minority but they will take our women and breed with them and try to become the majority.

The white man as we know it will go extinct as these "mutants" spread upon our lands.

That's been the fear at the core of white supremacy (or human supremacy, if we're talking strictly in allegorical terms), of being overrun, overpowered, outnumbered, and even outbred by so-called "others," whether they be nonwhite people in real life or, again in allegorical terms, superhumans or extraterrestrial/extradimensional beings with innately greater physical and/or mental capabilities. It's just that now the X-Men (and mutants as a whole) are no longer bothering to try to assuage human fears of replacement or annihilation because humans have shown that they will always reciprocate with fear, hatred, and genocidal violence regardless of what the X-Men/mutants do, so now they're doing what they have to do to not only survive, but finally thrive and prosper in the world. If humans still react to that with hatred and violence, at least that hatred and violence will come with consequences and reprisals for them, as they're no longer going after a stigmatized and marginalized people, but effectively declaring war on a sovereign nation-state with all the rights and powers of such --- including, of course, to defend its territory and right to exist.

[pkingdom]

And in the current status quo, its explicitly the goal of Krakoa to outbreed and replace the rest of humanity. So that kind of skews the metaphor. I've said before that having Xavier basic say the racists are right is not a great look.

[Electricmastro]

That's been the fear at the core of white supremacy (or human supremacy, if we're talking strictly in allegorical terms), of being overrun, overpowered, outnumbered, and even outbred by so-called "others,"

In studying history, as least as far as I've observed, I've noticed that hatred against smaller groups comes more from the fear that the groups are conspiring/will make society morally worse and hurt more people, like the assumption and fear that "witches" will cause demonic acts at Salem in the 1600s, the assumption and fear that blacks and Native Americas are "savages that will rape our white women and murder others" in the 1800s and 1900s, the assumption and fear that Japanese citizens in America were conspiring to bomb more places in the 1940s, the assumption and fear that communist spies will give crucial info to the Soviets in the 1950s, and so on and so forth. It's one of those reasons why I personally think that X-Men really doesn't work as an allegory to real life minorities despite what some people tell me, and that it's perhaps best done and analyzed with actual minorities instead of mutants. Minorities in real life aren't looking to "evolutionarily" replace others and I get the feeling that most haters today aren't oppressing them for that assumed reason either. This, combined with powers like mind control and mutants like Magneto having expressed his desire to rule over humans and be a slaveowner of them, among other things, perhaps makes matters more complicated than simply equating mutant minorities as being the same as real life minorities, regardless of allegory.

I'm not saying X-Men can't be inspired by reality, but at the same time, I suppose there has to come a point of considering the possibility of X-Men being written so far from reality to the point that "allegory" isn't the best word to use anymore.

And in the current status quo, its explicitly the goal of Krakoa to outbreed and replace the rest of humanity. So that kind of skews the metaphor. I've said before that having Xavier basic say the racists are right is not a great look.

Yep, further complicated with the mutants, according the Hickman, being seemingly fine, if not, collectively supportive of the idea of replacing the humans and taking dominion of the Earth.

[Killerbee911]

You guys are going to have to make up your minds because people LOVE saying that mutants are HUMAN. If mutants are human they are really replacing anything are they? So which one is it because when it is talk about people are quick to say Mutants are humans and you guys to seem to forget that. Now when people want to sell panic and omg at mutants being the remaining ones on earth it is a bad thing when Mutants are humans.

Just because you guys are throwing out the scary keywords REPLACE and DOMINION doesn't make it a scary thing. The science of the universe is Mutant is what next line and if it is not artificially interrupt that is what is going to happen. It is going to happen because mutants and humans are going to intersect and become ONE and slowly humans will disappear into the mutants species. No ethnic cleansing needed where you have to kill off a bunch of humans. They are human carriers of the X-gene that is going to keep on spreading that is why mutants will replace humanity in Marvel.

If they aren't some group of humans who goes "I don't think X-gene should be allowed to be spread" then is what is going to happen without Magneto and Xavier plan to speed up that process. You guys are trying to sell like the mutant point of view is wrong. Humans have to KILL out mutants to stop this process, Mutants don't have kill ONE person to accomplish all mutants on planet .Please explain to me how you guys are trying to sell mutants as the bad guys?