Seriously, it surprises me that people still don’t get that “whitewashing” doesn’t just mean “taking a character of color and turning them white,” but also applies to “focusing disproportionately on the stories of white people,” “glossing over or altering parts of a story to make it more palatable or make white people look better,” and “treating ‘white’ as the default race”
The fact that Disney churns out film after film after film after film about white people with a maximum of one film per ethnicity that showcases a group other than white people is whitewashing.
The fact that the story of “Pocahontas” (not her real name) has been substantially altered so that some of the white people in that story don’t look like such villains, with John Smith younger and Pocahontas significantly older, as well as recounting a popular myth of her saving John Smith from near-execution (a story John Smith made up to make himself look brave, the real Pocahontas told him to stop telling and hated him for using her to make himself look good, and he started to spread like wildfire after she died because she could no longer object) is whitewashing.
The fact that the characters on “How I Met Your Mother” are all white, and they supposedly live in New York City, but apparently associate exclusively with other white people (with the exception of Wayne Brady, who occasionally visits from out of town, and a recurring taxi driver) is whitewashing.
The fact that the Doctor has now been a white man a full twelve times in a row is whitewashing even though the character’s always been white, because the idea that there’s a character whose entire appearance can change in a matter of seconds, yet ends up white twelve times in a row by pure random chance, implies that white is a neutral default and other races are a deviation from that norm.
The fact that people get really angry at the suggestion that characters like Newt Scamander or Hermione Granger could be black because the books never explicitly say “they are black” is whitewashing.
Because that’s the thing. People often assume that when someone’s race isn’t explicitly specified, they’re white. People insist that Katniss Everdeen must be white because it is possible for them to rationalize that idea in their head. People think of white as “raceless” and every other color or ethnicity as “raced,” and that’s what we call “eurocentrism.”
And that’s the thing about whitewashing. It’s this idea that a “person” is white, and a “person of color” is black or asian or arab or latin@ or whatever they might be.
It’s why people call John Stewart the “Black Green Lantern” but just call Hal Jordan the “Green Lantern.” It’s why Miles Morales is called “Black Spider-man” but Peter Parker is just “Spider-man.” If you want to throw gender into the mix, it’s why Jennifer Walters is the “She-Hulk” but Bruce Banner isn’t the “He-Hulk.”
People think “character” is white and “character + black” is black. There is no default race. Community did a whole episode about how a truly raceless character would look something like this monstrosity:
But there’s the tricky part: Once you stop thinking of white characters as “character” and start thinking of them as “character + white,” it becomes really overwhelming how many characters are white.
I mean, I know there’s a kerfuffle over Disney Princesses right now, so let’s look at the list of official Disney Princesses, shall we? That is, let’s look at the list and include everyone’s race, not just the princesses of color:
- Snow White + White
- Cinderella + White
- Aurora + White
- Ariel + White
- Belle + White
- Jasmine + Arab
- Pocahontas + Native American
- Mulan + Asian
- Tiana + Black
- Rapunzel + White
- Merida + White
Soon to be added:
- Anna + White
- Elsa + White
4 of those 13 women are women of color. All four of those women of color are different races than one another. At the moment, the number of white princesses is seven, but it’s about to go up to nine. All nine of those princesses are the same race as one another, despite a few of them being different nationalities, although most of them hail from Western Europe.
And a lot of people are saying “but they’re just accurately portraying the parts of the world those stories are set in!” First of all, the presence of a person of color has never been implausible in any part of the world, in any period of human history. Hell, a bunch of these movies were set after Shakespeare had born, lived, and died, but he still managed to write a play set centuries earlier featuring a black male lead in Italy.
Second, and most importantly, it’s not like they are being assigned a setting at random and have to accommodate it in their character designs. The people at Disney choose to set film after film after film in France and Germany and Denmark.
It’s not that those areas produce more or better fairy tales and folk tales than any of the other continents, it’s that the stories that come from those areas are the ones Disney considers universal.
In the eyes of Disney, there’s a Princess for Black little girls to look up to, a Princess for Native little girls to look up to, a Princess for Arab little girls to look up to, a Princess for Asian little girls to look up to, and nine princesses for all little girls to look up to. It’s no coincidence that in almost all promotional art featuring the “Princess Lineup,” Jasmine, Tiana, Mulan, and Pocahontas are all standing in the back, usually obscured by other
whitePrincesses’ dresses, while the blonde lady brigade stands in the front.
And that is whitewashing.
|—||Linda Evans and Eve Goldberg, “The Prison Industrial Complex and the Global Economy” (via commiekinkshamer)|
Free Eisha Love, Transwoman Facing Attempted Murder Charges for Self-Defense from Hate Crime #FreeEisha
*SHOUTING TO THE HEAVENS*
WELL THAT TOOK A FUCKING TURN
Laughing because it’s funny, but also because I feel like nothing has ever illustrated why I hate Snape so clearly.
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense that he would be drafted, but I always liked the idea that he wasn’t drafted, you know, that he made the choice to enlist himself because I always thought that he, uh… When I read up on the comics, he was, you know, given his family background. He was always sort of following his dad’s footsteps, which would always had been in the army. So, he gave him — it kinda gave him no choice that he had made on his own to become — to be in the army, which later for me kinda gave him that angst to be unsure whether or not he wanted to be there." (x)
Have I mentioned today that I love these two.
steve rogers to the young avengers, sternly: “you’re too young to be superheroes, you could get hurt”
bucky barnes, appearing out of nowhere: “SORRY CAN U BACK THAT UP I THOUGHT MISTER BACKALLEY HERO HERE WAS TALKING ABOUT RECKLESSNESS LIKE IT’S NOT HIS MIDDLE NAME”
If whats happening in Ferguson was happening to an all white community, it would be called a dystopian novel
#and all actions against the police would be heroic and daring#and the plucky white protags would be encouraged to use violence to stop the injustice
Become a MEMBER at http://lakota.cc/1kvf8ka. #OurChildrenAreSacred
In recent weeks, The Mette Affair has crept out of the shadows and has gained momentum. If you are not familiar with this case, please see http://lakotalaw.org/special-reports/the-mette-affair to familiarize yourself. This case epitomizes the corruption of the state of South Dakota and underscores why it is so crucial to create a Lakota run foster care system. We are determined that this deeply disturbing and bone chilling case of sexual and physical abuse of Lakota foster children by their foster parents never occurs again. A “Twitter Storm” began on July 13th and has gained significant ground. To see all of the relevant content surrounding this storm go to twitter.com and search #metterapescandal. It is essential that you, as the “public”, show your support for these innocent children, who were abandoned and forgotten for so long.
Some recent news coverage regarding this case can be found at:
Please boost this! The trafficking and ethnocide of indigenous children in the Americas is one of the biggest violations of human rights today, and one that EVERY adoptee and child advocate needs to know about!
The phrase “rubber bullets” is often used to describe what are more accurately termed “rubber-coated metal bullets”, heavy steel projectiles with a minimal coating of 1mm or 2mm of rubber, that are regularly used to lethal effect alongside — not instead of — live ammunition.
Rubber-coated metal bullets are fired from metal tubes placed on the end of high-velocity rifles such as the M-16s commonly used by Israeli troops. Tubes contain around 8 rubber-coated, cylindrical, steel projectiles, which are powered by blank rounds fired from the gun’s magazine.
Writing in the medical journal, The Lancet, [doctors] said firing the bullets at civilians made it “impossible to avoid severe injuries to vulnerable body regions such as the head, neck and upper torso, leading to substantial mortality, morbidity and disability.”
They added: “We reported a substantial number of severe injuries and fatalities inflicted by use of rubber bullets when vulnerable upper-body regions such as the head, neck and upper torso were struck.
“This type of ammunition should therefore not be considered a safe method of crowd control.”
Amazingly, not The Onion:
“[W]e now have young men telling Bloomberg News that they basically view their female peers as rape bombs just waiting to explode and ruin their lives.”