Diversity, Heroes and Literature ...
In my excitement about DADT (and, admittedly, disappointment about the DREAM act), I've been echoing some of what the DC Women Kicking Ass blogs have been posting, regarding Kate Kane, AKA Batwoman. But they've run a lot of good stuff about female comic book characters there, and it's very worth reading. I found their overviews on Stephanie Brown (Batgirl) and Lois Lane to be particularly relevant in connecting those characters to the culture. Writings like these and Andrew Wheeler's wonderful "No More Mutants" colum for Bleeding Cool do a great job of keeping diversity issues forward in the minds of the creators and fans of pop culture fictions, the groups most likely to be able to influence the continued diversity of the characters.
It almost feels odd explaining why this might be important. They are, after all, simply stories, and in the case of comic books, not particularly widely-read ones, at that. It seems odd to have to explain why a Kate Kane or (to switch to TV) a Capt. Jack Harkness might be extremely relevant to a gay teenager, how being able to see themselves as an action hero is the sort of thing that might actually change the course of someone's life. Moreover, it's almost unbelievable that one needs to point out that seeing diversity reflected in mediums such as film, television and comics goes a long way toward helping the culture sort out and normalize its own issues with a swiftly changing population mix, never mind the strictly commecial concerns that changing landcape presents for media companies looking 10 or 20 years down the road.
No, it would seem self-evident, but it terribly much isn't. The culture gets stuck in tokenism, reverting to type with a shift in the breeze. Take the odd case of the superhero, the Atom. In the midst of a number of relaunches and redesigns, comics writer Grant Morrison (who is,, for my money, the absolute best in the business at reconceiving old superhero concepts, even if reactionary, usually corporate, forces usually undo his best ideas) came up with a new Atom, Ryan Choi, a young Chinese scientist and longtime fan of the preceeding Atom, Ray Palmer. In the hands of writer Gail Simone, his comic was a delicious read. When it changed hands, it disintegrated, and eventually was canceled. Soon after, DC Comics, wanting to return Palmer to the role, killed off the character in a different book. It was brutal and unneccesary, especially when you've got three different white guys running around as the flash. It was hardly DC's only instance of reluctance to part with its Caucasian characters, but it was certainly the most egregious, especially considering just how good the Simone run was. The fact remains, DC poked at diversifying its characters, but then bolted the moment it was hard. Could they have bolstered him by, say putting him in the Justice League, as they did with the Latino Super hero, Jamie Reyes (The Blue Beetle), whom they put in Teen Titans. Whatever their reasons for doing so, the move was distasteful and reeked of, if not overt racism, then at least a sort of enormous insensitivity.
This is the sort of bias that echoes throughout a culture, its significance snowballing as it moves further from the original slight. Nor is it restricted to "low" culture mediums. Take, for example, Huffington Post poetry critic Anis Shivani, who recently asked 22 poets to name who they believe is the most important contemporary poet and what influence that poet has had on his or her work. In what seems to be the sort of oversight that only the least race-conscious are capable of making -- that is to say, those who believe they are "blind to race," rather than keeping a conscious check on themselves and their own culturally inherited biases -- the list of poets queried seems to be devoid entirely of African-American writers. It's diverse, certainly -- there are Latino writers, and at least one Arab writer -- but unless I'm mis-identifying a writer's background, none of them are black. Moreover, although I do not recognize every poet that was named as influential in the article and so couldn't say for certain, but it appears that the only black poet named as being "influential" to contemporary poetry was Aimé Césaire. Forgive me if I'm wrong about that. I didn't recognize every name listed. But I recognized most, and it became clear fairly quickly that most of the poets interviewed selected those whose work and background was, quite understandably, most like their own.
But because of the initial act of bias (intentional or otherwise), an entire generation of highly influential black American poets was excluded from the list. Nikki Giovanni? Lucille Clifton? Sekou Sundiata? Quincy Troupe? These are poets that almost everyone who works the "live" (slam, coffeehouse, whatever) side of poetry has a direct debt to, not just African-American poets, but by positioning the focus of the lens where he did, Shivani manages to exclude the work of black American poets entirely. And that's a problem, especially when you have a forum and a readership. It's not just irresponsible, it creates an incomplete and misleading picture, one that echoes out and has ramifications beyond the initial mistake.
