User blog:Nausiated/Racism and the Marvel Universe

A little while back I started up an article on the wiki called Race and Racism in Marvel Comics because the issue of race -- in the context of what was and was not considered socially acceptable in publications in a historical context -- has always been something that interests me.

As many of you know, I've been spending a lot of time posting information about Marvel's Timely era of publication which has a lot of stories that, by today's standards, are considered racist.

Since Marvel's 70th anniversary, they have been reviving a lot of their old and long forgotten characters from the 40s, and among them are some characters that were previously racial stereotypes. Three characters come to mind: Whitewash Jones, Slow Motion Jones and Jap Buster Johnson.

For first two were bad racial stereotypes of African-Americans, while Johnson was ridiculously hateful and seemed to glorify being racist towards Japanese. And I'm talking to some excessive levels, and this was after Pearl Harbor when saying awful things about the Japanese was considered socially acceptable. The Johnson character was just downright horrendous about it, like the character was racist to begin with and the war "justified" his point of view.

Marvel recently brought back all three of these characters. In the case of Whitewash Jones, he went from a black minstrel show stereotype to a US military pilot as part of a revamp of the Young Allies that was more "believable" to a modern audience. Similarly, Slow Motion Jones went from a slow moving dimwitted character who was briefly the Whizzer's sidekick to a super-speedster himself and a capable member of the Crazy SUES. Meanwhile, on the same token, Jap Buster Johnson was also a member of the Crazy SUES and delegated to a kill crazy racist who was quickly incinerated by one of his comrades (but accidentally, at least as per the story, I'm sure the writer relished that bit).

It appears to me that for the most part, Marvel is not denying the racist background of a lot of these early characters (it's pointed out in all the current Young Allies and All-Winners Squad comics that have come out in the last few years). It's like Marvel acknowledges it, and I feel they approach it from a historical context: In that the revamped versions of the characters (with the exception of Johnson) do not really have any of these stereotypes. Their supporting cast members seldom share these views. It's also recognized as a sign of the era in which these characters originated from. Most importantly, with Wash Jones in particular, he resigns his character as the product of ignorance over anything else.

I find it all fascinating, as I've never really experienced any real discrimination in my life (well other than being Canadian, but usually when people are making fun of me for that, they're usually ignorant people with no concept of cultures outside of their home country).

But I have to ask, those of you out there who are part of these ethnicity's, what do you think about the revival of these characters? Do you like how they are being represented? Do you think that Marvel has done a good job in identifying these characters origins, and addressing the touchy issues involved with respect toward their readers? Or do you think the opposite? Does it offend you?

I'm just curious of other peoples perspectives.