Thread by @polotek

This guy has no idea why this is such an ignorant comment. Which is part of the critique. What we want is for creators to have flexibility that is not constrained by white supremacy. The response from Whiteness is "well then jettison all context and pretend nothing matters".

https://twitter.com/_CraigLambert/status/1379906144689397760

Superman is an alien who just *happens* to look like an all American white male humanoid. Did you know that for the longest time all other Kryptonians just happened to be white as well? Coincidence I'm sure.

As time went on. Our time here in the real world. There was social and political progress. And eventually comic creators were like "yikes, I don't think all Kryptonians should be white". So they stopped doing that. There was never any creative barrier to it.

T'Challa is a human from earth. He and his people are from a fictional nation, but one rooted in very human and very real African culture. There is still creative flexibility there. But introducing Whiteness there *subverts the story itself.*

It's not hard to look at these things and make critical decisions about them. It is only Whiteness that tries to tell us it's impossible to think critically about racial issues. One of the many ways it tries to delegitimize the idea that race is a real and knowable competency.

Here's the thing though. I'm a person who believes it is *possible* to introduce Whiteness into Wakanda. In a way that is creative and fits with the lore. But the story would have to address that Whiteness directly. Because that is what is required in a story about Africans.

There is a *reason* that making T'Challa's grandparents white would be rejected. Not just on principle. It's because in that *context* it doesn't make any fucking sense. Doing it without putting in the effort to make it make sense becomes offensive.

To bring this back around. I'm willing to be wrong about this, but I just don't think these same kinds of cultural issues exist with the Superman story. He himself is most certainly white. I don't think that'll change. But there is lots of flexibility outside of that.

The point is about the excuse that was given about why this actor *could not* play the role. That excuse was very much about the real world, not the comic book story. "White fans expect Superman's grandparents to be white".

We can think critically about this as well. I think it's absolutely the truth. A lot of white people want Superman's perceived ancestry to stay "pure". Just like Black people want that for T'Challa. But the reasoning and implications behind those two things are just not the same.

Folks like @_CraigLambert would love to push us into talking about these two things as if they are the same. They would love to elide all of the historical context and pretend we cant tell the difference. But guess what? We can.