Spiderman's Politically Correct Replacement 608
jbarr writes "In the latest Marvel Comic series 'Ultimate Fallout,' Miles Morales replaces Peter Parker who has been killed off by the Green Goblin. Morales is a half-black, half-Latino teen, and the creators haven't ruled out that he might be gay. From the article: 'Marvel's editor in chief Axel Alonso denied that having a black Spider Man was a publicity stunt. 'What you have is a Spider-Man for the 21st century who's reflective of our culture and diversity. As someone who grew up on a steady diet of Luke Cage, Hero For Hire and Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, I am personally invested,' he said. "
PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is a half-black, half-Latino teenager more politically correct than a white teenager?
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
For that matter, when did Latino become a race?
How is that "politically correct"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Political correctness is daintily tip-toeing around words and phrases because those words or phrases may or may not be taboo relative to modern cultural, racial, religious, sexual, etc. constructs.
A Spiderman with non-white ethnic background is just diverse. Anyone can get bitten by a radioactive spider.
Re:PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
or better yet what is a latino? i'm sure the mexicans and peruvians think of themselves as different
Re:PC? (Score:3, Insightful)
'Politically correct' now just means things that angry white men don't like. Often that includes (and I don't know why) people of other races, religions, etc.
The article is from the Daily Mail, no surpise there.
Re:PC? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:PC? (Score:1, Insightful)
(Note: This being the internet, I expect some of you may interpret this as a specific attack toward blacks and Latinos. That's not exactly what I meant, I'm just sick of people demanding preferential treatment in the name of equality, whoever they are. Be it gender or ethnicity, the vocal groups never seem to want to be treated fairly, they want to be treated better than everyone else. It's actually feminists that get on my nerves more than anyone else, but that's irrelevant.)
"politically correct?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is being black/latino "politically correct"? (Score:4, Insightful)
All those blacks, latinos, and gays walking around -- who knew that their very existence is a challenge to samzenpus and jbarr's political beliefs?
Certainly comics should only depict people who look like the vast majority in the United States as of 1950. They should only be marketed toward those people, who rightfully define our country in their own image. Anything else would be politically ... umm .... incorrect.
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then demand universal access to education instead of whining about a group of people who actually succeeded in pushing forward something that benefits them while doing no harm to you.
Re:PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi, black male here.
I'm not the one you responded to, but I'll have you know that I'm sick and tired of people playing the discrimination card just for getting personal gain. I could have entered some programs just for being black, even when I didn't qualify otherwise. I declined.
Stop discrimination: give everyone the same treatment. That would do more towards equality than anything else.
Leave him the fuck alone (Score:4, Insightful)
Italian artist Sara Pichelli, who designed Spider-Man's new look, added: 'Maybe sooner or later a black or gay - or both - hero will be considered something absolutely normal.’
How about you make a NEW superhero that is black or gay, or whatever, and for the superheroes that I grew up with just leave them the fuck alone! Where's your goddamn originality? Of course this is a fucking gimmick to make money, you stupid asshole!
Re:PC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Note: This being the internet, I expect some of you may interpret this as a specific attack toward blacks and Latinos...)
I didn't read it that way at all. I read it as an attack on anyone who is not a white male. Although I'm betting you don't like some of those, too.
I agree that preferential treatment sucks. Having a non-white Spiderman doesn't fall into that category. He just isn't white. It also gives the writers some room to create interesting and new stories.
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't you know what political correctness is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Making a deal about race is what got the US into the mess in the first place and to fix it we are going to focus on race? Race plays too big of a role in the American conscience and in order to fix our problem we need to make this a "nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Precisely. We need to fix this inequality by adding even more inequality and giving certain minorities more benefits than others have! The situation could be worse, so you have no right to complain about anything.
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
So some white kid who grew up in a nasty trailer park with a father in jail and mother on welfare, and has no money at all for college and had to be on the free lunch program in high school because they had no money for food, is somehow part of the "privileged class" and deserves nothing, while some black kid from a middle class family deserves free college tuition simply because he's black?
It truly is a bleak age when people are able to coast simply because of the color of their skin, while others who truly are impoverished are left in the cold because of the color of their skin.
Re:PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, what? Why should "athletic excellence" count for a damn thing? We're talking about education, and furthering ones intellectual pursuits. Why exactly should the fact that someone can throw a ball or run really fast mean they get money for extra education while a smarter (although not brilliant) kid who is a better study does not? If they're good at sports, great, let'em go to football camp or something, but if they want an educational scholarship, perhaps they should display intellectual aptitude. And please don't tell me about how it's because the university can make money off of sports, that doesn't strike me as any better than saying we should have special scholarships for exotic dancers because then the school can open a strip club. Schools are in the education business, not the entertainment industry.
Re:PC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:PC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Having a non-white Spiderman doesn't fall into that category.
By itself, it doesn't. Accompanied with the statement that, "What you have is a Spider-Man for the 21st century who's reflective of our culture and diversity," it is exactly that. The implication that you need to kill of a white male and replace him with a minority in order to reflect our culture and diversity is probably more of a commentary on our society than the comic's authors intended.
It also gives the writers some room to create interesting and new stories.
Ah, yes. You don't have room for interesting stories without a minority protagonist.
Re:Don't you know what political correctness is? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Racism got the U.S. into the mess in the first place, and to fix it we need to acknowledge the role that racism played in our history, that the effects of racist policies linger on for generations after the policies were removed, and that racism is still with us today as a socioeconomic force.
Instead, we still have people glorifying the Confederacy, an anti-American organization dedicated to race-based slavery. We have the acceptance of racism that allows Americans to question the birthplace of the first African-American president and not be expelled from the political dialog. (I'm not saying opposing Obama implies racism; I'm saying birtherism and death-panelerism have racist roots, and anyone on the right not standing up to these wackos is aiding and abetting racism. There's still plenty of room to disagree or oppose Obama on substantive issues.) We have the racism of the War on Drugs. We have the unwillingness too consider how the legacy of segregation affects African-Americans today.
The conservative "let's just ignore color from now on" neglects our responsibility to address the problems created by all the years when we didn't ignore color. Maybe it's a genuinely accidental neglect, but it has the convenient effect of keeping power where it is.
Why Affirmative Action is necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
I see this whole "preferential treatment" BS a lot. Before you go spouting off again, here are a few things to keep in mind. Let's take African-Americans as an easy example, since that is where Affirmative Action is almost always applied.
For hundreds of years, African-Americans were brutally oppressed. All of a sudden, in 1964, it became illegal to discriminate against them in many places, such as housing, jobs, etc. However, it's not like on midnight July 2, all of a sudden, African-Americans, who had been systematically denied access to things like education, job opportunities, social infrastructure, etc. were equipped with all of the tools, knowledge, and contacts to really be equal. And it's not like all of a sudden, the vast white infrastructure steeped in bigotry and racism suddenly said, "You know, let's give these folks a fair chance."
Unfortunately, what happened is that racism continued in various forms, just as it continues today. You have two candidates, one African-American and one majority white, applying for a job, each with equal qualifications? The theory behind giving the job to the African-American is two-fold. First of all, it is an effort to try to right the wrongs of centuries past. That African-American person who gets the job will now be able to send their kids to college, to integrate themselves in a more equal social structure, to provide much-needed diversity that will make opportunities truly equal, not just equal "on paper." Secondly, as for the white candidate that got turned down? Don't feel too sorry for him or her. Statistically speaking, that person has a much better chance at finding another job, and getting paid more for it, than his African-American counterpart would were the situation reversed.
People kill me, acting like those poor white people are so disadvantaged because of Affirmative Action. The stats just don't bear that out. I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!" because their job prospects would be better. They're not. I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!" because they wanted better pay. Why do you think that the recent recession has hammered minority communities a lot harder than white communities? Because even today, almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, there are huge disparities in minority employment and minority pay as compared to their white counterparts. So yeah, poor white people, being all discriminated against with Affirmative Action. What's your idea for providing equal opportunity and upholding the Civil Rights Act?
Also, one thing that I think is lost on a lot of people is that it's not like if you have a large company, you have to have a 50/50 split of minority/majority employees. Affirmative Action only kicks when when there is such a significant statistical deviation from the norm that you are obviously discriminating in your hiring practices. If you have 2,000 employees in an area where minority population is, say, 20%, but only 3% of your employees are minorities, something's wrong, and you're going to get bitten. If 19% or 18% of your employees are minorities, you're not going to have a problem.
So when people gripe about Affirmative Action, I have to ask, okay, so what exactly do you think should be the result of flagrantly disregarding the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Let's say I'm a company with 2000 employees, and I have an implicit hiring policy not to hire any minorities, which is against the law. If there's no Affirmative Action, what's the punishment? I get to just keep right on discriminating and hiring white people exclusively because I hand-wave the law off saying, "they make better candidates"? I'm not asking at what point you draw the line between someone discriminating and someone not, but if you're against Affirmative Action, you're basically saying there should be no line, and without some sort of
Re:PC? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference between being sensitive to a certain type of comment and reading attack where no attack exists. The mere act of being silly is not, prima facie, an attack against a group of people.
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I'm sensitive, but it's because I've been ridiculed, dismissed and attacked.
I transitioned in my twenties, and have lived and worked full time as a woman for over a decade in some very conservative work environments. The hormones did wonders, because even without any cosmetic surgery I don't think anyone here at work "knows" about my past, because if they did, it would get around pretty fast.
So, because I'm "stealth" I get to hear the nasty things that cis gendered people say about trans people. The gay jokes are pretty much unacceptable these days, but the jokes about trans... those still seem to be okay in a lot of people's minds. And that won't change until people speak up.
So I'm speaking up