AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Black wonder woman12/20/2023 As I got older, I became better able to name my double displacement I was frustrated with the racism I saw in feminist circles and with the misogyny I saw among racial-justice advocates. “For us,” she explained, “the man is here, and we’re here,” she said gesturing with her hands to illustrate that to be a black woman meant that a man I had never met would always be stationed above me. I remember as a child being told by my hairdresser that feminism wasn’t for black women. My race set me apart from my white classmates, but I learned at a young age that within the black community my gender marked me as inferior. Her powers set her apart from other humans, but among the other members of the Justice League, she was relegated to secretary. Wonder Woman and I were both outsiders on two levels. They led me to think her character perhaps made more sense as a black woman. And yet, her story and overlapping identities-a superhero in a world of humans and a heroine in a world of heroes-felt uniquely familiar to me. Wonder Woman is white, I was reminded again and again. But so often these allegories center on superpowered individuals who are white and male, making their claim to these stories of marginalization ring false. Even so, I certainly had the model for it: I was allowed to prefer Wonder Woman to Superman, but I wasn’t allowed to imagine Wonder Woman as black.Ĭomic books have long famously told stories of oppression-characters grapple with feelings of otherness and alienation, fear of discrimination, a need to hide a true identity. I didn’t yet have a vocabulary that included “white feminism,” a shorthand term for a “race-blind” form of feminism that ends up centering the needs of white women at the expense of women of color. These episodes were usually resolved with an appeal to commonalities and the message that racists were the only people who “saw color.” According to popular culture of this era, gender differences were empowering, but racial differences were divisive. From Family Ties to Golden Girls, shows during this time tackled race and racism without ever acknowledging that racial differences mattered. “Race shouldn’t matter,” the late ’80s had told me through the “very special episodes” of my favorite TV programs. It seemed this sentiment was everywhere I turned at the time. “It doesn’t matter,” the woman declared pointedly. I told her I’d wanted to make my heroine look like me. A white mother who was supervising the students saw my work with shock, she asked why I’d “ruined” my picture. Later that week, at an after-school event, armed with a coloring book, a brown crayon, and my mother’s voice still in my head, I filled in Wonder Woman’s skin to match my own. So she can be whatever race you want her to be.” Not wanting to dash my hopes, she added, “But she’s not real. “She’s white,” my mother told me, perhaps wistfully, but definitively. Maybe I could believably be her for Halloween? Or maybe, simply, I could be wonderful, too. But in many iconic pictures in the comic books I read, Wonder Woman appeared to have a trace of melanin that made me think- maybe? As a child, I had seen the Amazonian princess portrayed by Lynda Carter, who looked unmistakably white, on the syndicated television show I loved. It was 1989-almost 30 years before I’d eagerly await the premiere of the first Wonder Woman movie. When I was eight years old, I asked my mother if Wonder Woman was black.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |