The last few years have been interesting to say the least when it comes to discussions around discrimination in the media.

Society (particularly the US) had largely been spared explicit discussions about racism and discrimination in superhero media. Movies like Blade, Spawn and Steel (despite featuring black leads) didn't address the race of the main characters. The X-men movies "kind" of addressed this but there weren't really any deep real world discussions about actual discrimination in the movies. Those movies basically used the mutant condition as a catch-all-metaphor for all forms of discrimination but they were pretty vapid discussions. In addition, all of these were led by a fictional minority group thus "watering" down the impact of said discussions.

Series like Watchmen (the actual direct sequel to the comics) and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier went straight into discussions about real world historical and current racism in the US. Although, it must be pointed out the original Watchmen series pretty much treated anyone right leaning like a complete nut (but that's pretty much in line with Alan Moore's philosophy). In addition, Black Panther went into discussions about African and African-American issues in a way that hadn't been before and The Boys series dived head first into addressing the current rise and mainstreaming of white supremacy in the United States.

Obviously, there's been the general expected pushback against these sort of stories because of how uncomfortable these discussions can be. Although it must be pointed that some of this pushback completely miss the point like the criticisms of the Watchmen tv series being too "political" (this sort of criticism isn't valid though considering the original work is an explicitly political work of fiction). However, the world has changed and we are likely going to see more of these with a possibly black Superman written by Ta-Nehisi Coates coming soon.

It's an interesting discussion and so far said series and movies aren't too preachy, I think these discussions are necessary to have. Let's be honest, if there was a real world Captain America, a good chunk of the US won't accept a black man taking that mantle. To simply have a series of movies that ignores this is kind of ridiculous. How will the world react to a black man having the power of a god like Superman, what does it actually mean to be a minority superhero in the US...in a country where a large part of the population actually hate and fear you. This isn't stuff that can just be ignored anymore.