#i think even then the general consensus is that you're still asian but even then it feels like the guilt or cringe is still there y'know?? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zoobus · 11 months

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This is not me talking myself down but I can't really understand a lot of things you say because you have a bigger vocabulary and idk, you seems like write really well and I don't know if I don't understand some things properly bc English isn't my first language or... for some other reason, like a deficit or something... But what I understand though, I tend to agree with you and even when I don't agree I still like to think about it. Well, with all of this unnecessary and unasked information, I'll like to ask what you meant by your post about Nope (2022)? What was your interpretation? Tbh, to this day, I don't think it's a commentary about minorities. The only thing I think it could be seem like that is that thing with their father. Like, black people invented a lot of things and they were the first to do a lot of things, but they didn't get the recognition or the money they deserved most of the time so there's that. Often than that, I just think that the cast is black and there's the other dude who's not white... I don't remember much but I remember commenting with my brother that I thought it was cool that they were just, a diverse cast, with two black protagonists but they were just living their life and something fucked-up (presented itself as an opportunity) happened, that I thought it was cool that Jordan Peele didn't want to make the movie about racism. He does that greatly, but I believe black people want movies in which they are the ones acting/writing/producing/directing to be as diverse and full of possibilities as it always has been for white people, like, they want to have the opportunity to be in every possible story. True to be told, I'm not black... Or technically I am,,, second to some governmental organizations... Well, I'm pardo (kind of like mulatto), mother is black and father is white. I'm just saying this bc in Brazil, if you're pardo, chances are that you live like black people just with some more passability and has it easier than black people (pessoas retintas) but if you have any racial/class consciousness you understand some things that I'm afraid other mixed countries don't understand as well. But we're still racists as fuck so... I just rambled, idk. So what about Nope?

For me, part of the fun of movies and books is reading what other people took got from it. I love reading takes I would never imagine on my own, I love disagreeing with the consensus, and generally I think I’m able to consider, sympathize, and engage with opinions that differ from mine without losing confidence in my own interpretation.

So when I turned to Nope essays and the vast majority of them took it as a reflection of racial politics… I’m not exaggerating when I say I had a minor spiral. Was I stupid? Was I actually stupid? I didn't get any of that. I’m black. I’m privileged as hell, but I am African-American. I loved Get Out. Am I genuinely just a fucking moron who missed the obvious? Picking up media subtext is MY thing. That’s the one thing I’m good at. I had to rewatch Nope to prove I’m not an idiot. I must have been tired that day.

And maybe I am an idiot who missed all the subtext, but I’m more confident this time around saying I agree with you. I think a lot of people (including black people) are misconstruing unchangeable truths (the main characters are black) as social commentary. I think there is some amount of projection, that inclusion is inherently a political statement. Dare I say race is possibly clouding everyone’s perception. Take this popular essay excerpt:

Now look at this gif of OJ:

What about this suggests his character would have been at ease and unanxious if the crowd staring at him was black? What about him talking softly with his eyes glued to the floor suggests his discomfort stems from his marginalization as a black man? What did Peele add to his film that indicated OJ as racially-motivated-socially awkward rather than naturally awkward other than the fact that he’s black? It's plausible that racism could have made him like that but does the movie itself give us anything to make that assumption? I don’t think it does. I’ve seen some annoyed posts regarding autistic headcanons because they think these are just normal black man traits and um. No, shrinking violet who prefers animals to humans really aren't. I do know black dudes like OJ. I would not call them the Black Male Experience.

I find this viewpoint super frustrating – to plagiarize Margaret Atwood – White racism, white racism, is every fucking thing run by white racism? Pretending you have a personality of your own, that you can be an adorable, beloved Asian child star, Shy and awkward or boisterous and arrogant, it’s all motivated by white racism.

then the pa guy is confused as to where the “older one” is, clearly giving the message that he doesn’t trust oj to be a competent person. the pa sees him as an untrained boy,

reach. Ignoring the fact that people hate changes and learning your go-to expert died is a pretty significant change – oh yeah, the PA who was letting people walk directly behind a fucking horse just screamed “respectful of his subordinates/contractors if they’re white.”

The whites on the movie set were disrespectful, but imo I didn't see a compelling reason to read it as a commentary on how black men specifically are treated since the type of disrespect shown in that scene doesn’t come up for the rest of the film.

people talk about the horse, but they don’t know anything about the man riding it

None of those people knew anything about the horse. They don’t even mention the horse’s name. Like I get what you mean (jk no I don’t) but the people very much did not know or care about the horse. Here’s the script:

Emerald: Now did you know that the very first assembly of photographs in sequential order to create a motion picture was a two second clip of a Black man on a horse...? Yes it was, yes it was! Now some of y’all know Eadweard Muybridge, the grandfather of motion pictures who took the pictures that made that clip... but does anybody know the name of that Black jockey that rode the horse...? Holst: No Emerald: Nope. The first ever stunt man, animal wrangler and movie star rolled up in one and there’s almost no record of em… That man was a Bahamian jockey that went by the name of Alistair E. Haywood. My great great-grandfather.

I’m not even certain what to make of there being almost no record of him in the greater context of the movie’s themes about viewers feeling they’re entitled to consume/perceive another.

I find the assertion that the Peele made *any* parallels between the way animals are treated and the way poc are treated ungrounded. As I said in my original post, if your takeaway from Jupe’s generic sitcom and movie posters was that he’s EXACTLY as absurd as a chimp in a birthday hat, that the white family adopting an asian kid was commentary on token racism, you are literally just racist. There is nothing in this movie that suggests an insidious reason for his popularity.

The humans watch, the animals are watched until they do something drastic to make it stop. But none of the animals get characterization beyond that and none of the humans act in similar enough ways for me to derive anything from it. I don't recall anyone coercing OJ into unwanted eye contact. The glimpses we see of Jupe's childhood are of a cute kid on a corny sitcom set. The exploitation comes after the random monkey event, when SNL makes a parody skit and the world gradually forgets the gut-wrenching terror of being a little boy hearing your crush's flesh squished.

I am not saying race is irrelevant or that Peele had absolutely no intention of including subtext about black bodies or race exploitation in the film industry, but I am saying that I rewatched Nope specifically for that reading and I don’t find that reading compelling.

Unfortunately, I spent most of this complaining about what other people thought rather than my own. My interpretation was pretty surface-level. I think it was mostly about

respecting nature as it is and not what you imagine it is

somewhat about the nature of perception and how easily it’s distorted/how easy it is to believe you have a full understanding when you’ve only seen about an inch of it, and

something about feeling entitled to perceive things, idk I accept that I probably didn’t pick up on this theme as often as the director wanted me too. I’ll admit that.

#long post #niche effortposts #recommendations #because I do recommend it it was fun #nope (2022)#can you tell i have an urgent deadline ahead of me

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smol-nevi · 3 years

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I don't generally make this kind of thing a habit, but I think if you happen to be on the Crystal RP Discord, aka @crystal-rp-ffxiv, you should probably be aware of this kind of behavior, so here goes.

If you're on Crystal RP and the admin team decides they don't like you, you're going to be living under a microscope while they wait for you to mess up, if not bait you, probably while making up conspiracies about you as well. As for how I know this, I was a moderator for about a week's duration and saw it first-hand.

Unapologetically lengthy post. Receipts in the link above, long version below the cut.

From the first time I looked in the mod chat I knew something was wrong. I read backwards in the channel, thinking I'd acclimate myself and see what kind of rules precedents had been set and that sort of thing. I mostly just found out that they had it out for a particular member (at the time using the name Jericho) for not much reason. They'd spent a troubling amount of time over the past few months watching him and another member like vultures, believing them to be the same person and waiting for them to make some kind of mistake that would justify banning both of them...despite keeping different schedules, having different personalities and typing habits, and visibly being two different people. The admin team had come to the conclusion that Jericho was a troll who wanted to make them look bad, and anything he said or did was scrutinized to a ridiculous degree for evidence that would corroborate their belief.

Except none of the things they believed at all were true: he'd had a minor argument via DM with the head admin Benjimir Thursby's wife, Tessariel Aerlinn, who had made an overly broad statement about anime and Asian culture. Jericho had told her that overgeneralization about 'Asian culture' is potentially racist, and she became extremely angry, saying that because she's Asian, she can't be racist against Asians. After that, it seemed that Jericho was considered fair game for whatever retaliatory actions the two of them could justify.

Even a cursory glance at actual racism in Asia pokes Tessariel's statement entirely full of holes, and having personally read the conversation I didn't see anything actually inaccurate in his statement even if she believed it didn't apply to her. I asked what he had done that would merit such a response, because it felt very disproportionate to anything I'd ever seen him do publicly, and that was what I was told. The exchange via DMs had been screencapped and kept in a channel for evidence, and while I didn't get a copy of it, I did read it, and I said that I thought it sounded awfully one-sided and punitive and would have been much better as an actual conversation. I also expressed that I was concerned how much of the channel had been solely devoted to what was basically a witch hunt, considering that some of the server members had over the course of the past couple of months commented that the admins' behavior towards Jericho seemed biased.

I basically got a pat on the head and told that my opinion was "valued" but wrong. This would happen a lot over the course of the week.

Shit continued to escalate. Their favorite punching bag, who was acutely aware of the grudge by now and probably trying to be nice and discuss something that he thought they could all talk about, brought up some articles that stated that LOTRO might be having a graphical overhaul. This actually ended in him being put into some kind of time-out mute, because "everyone knows those articles are debunked already" despite them still being hosted on reputable games news sites. Back-channel, the admin consensus was that he was in fact trying to bait Benjimir and Tessariel into somehow looking stupid in public, because [paraphrasing] 'he knows how important LOTRO is to them.'

Benjimir in fact went off publicly about how he knows the dev team and they sent him 'personalized swag' for 'being himself' and that everyone should just listen to him because he's right. Someone else made a reasonable request for sources on statements that Benjimir made about the LOTRO improvements not happening, and they immediately became the team's private #2 punching bag.

The whole time I reiterated that this was really uncomfortable and I had serious concerns about the way they were handling Jericho. And as always I received a pat on the head and was told to not worry about it, there were really good reasons for it, really. He was 'bringing down the quality of discourse' on the server somehow. Benjimir decided that the only way he would unmute Jericho is if Jericho talked directly to him, and that Jericho tried to talk to any of the more level-headed members of the team first was taken as obvious evidence that he wanted to evade rules and create problems. I asked when we planned to unmute him, and Tessariel immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had messaged me, which wasn't incorrect but the way she worded it felt highly accusatory and I was beginning to feel that I was also in trouble somehow for not agreeing with the rest of the team.

Things came to a head quickly when I woke up and looked at the mod chat and they were having an animated conversation that started with Benjimir asking if it was 'bad that he was laughing at Jericho' and most of the rest of the team talking about how he was stupid, uninformed, a troll, etc. for the sin of having some misgivings about cryptocurrency, of all the things. One of the mods self-described their behavior as bullying. I said that this was extremely unprofessional and that I thought they should keep conversation to actual moderation matters, and if they had a personal disagreement with a server member they should handle it in a personal venue, not via official server moderation channels.

I was, for the final time, patted on the head, and told that this was not something they would consider, because the moderation team 'needs to be able to vent for their mental health' (never mind that the job was not stressful except for the rest of the team committing worse behavior than the server members) and that maybe I was in fact too sensitive for the job. Benjimir heavily implied that I had become too close to Jericho and was being manipulated, managed to misgender me somehow despite my having used solely male or neutral pronouns the entire time I'd been on the server, and after relating a story in which a couple of years ago a well-liked moderator left after having the same complaints as I did (which he saw nothing at all troubling about), suggested that I should be demoted to babysitting the lore channel.

So I took some time to collect receipts, which are linked at the top of the post, and told him where to shove it.

Since that time, things have actually somehow gotten worse on Crystal RP. Benjimir posted an entire page screed vaguely talking about "rampant negativity" that stated anyone with questions should DM him.

Upon DMing him with questions, Jericho was banned, the only reason given being that he was a 'poor fit' for the server in some vague way. I was immediately banned afterwards for calling out this decision as being driven by a personal vendetta in the feedback channel and let him know afterwards via DMs in no uncertain terms that I had logged everything I needed and would be building my case (and that he is an asshole). Jericho was reinstated, though I'm not sure what the conditions of his return were as that was after my ban and I didn't ask since I didn't want to stress him out further. Benjimir also reprimanded someone for discussing asexuality, stating in a DM to them that the conversation was somehow ERP related. I called him out on this via DM as well. Tessariel was not much later caught posting my last DMs to Benjimir in an entirely unrelated server, though she didn't include the part after that where I brought up his aphobia (during Pride Month, in a server with a rainbow icon no less). Benjimir for some reason decided to suddenly start following my FC's Tumblr well after our falling-out.

And as of today (6/24), Crystal RP now has seven pages of draconian rules, because it wasn't micromanaged hard enough before or something. Notably, a lot of these rules describe behaviors that they wanted to punish Jericho for but couldn't at the time justify, or that they'd like to punish me for but have nothing they can do to me. Or they exist to justify their own behavior, as now seen in the very beginning of the channel:

"This approach also provides our volunteers with leeway to act in good faith without the burden befitting a professional occupation."

"So we afford them the means to speak openly, vent, lament, candidly and yes, sometimes crassly and raw about everything and one."

Not only did they behave unprofessionally and shit-talk before, they have now encoded in the rules that this is acceptable and even good moderator behavior, because they saw someone else do it so it's fine (a lot of this wording is very similar to what I was told when I protested it). So rather than address anything I ever said past or present, Benjimir is choosing to double down and giving himself and his team explicit permission to be shitty, right in the opening paragraphs where you'd have expected a mission statement or at least some sort of welcome.

Which is about all you need to know about that server and its owners, in my estimation. I'd considered not even posting to Tumblr about it, but given that it's only getting worse, I think it should be generally known that this is how you can expect to potentially be treated.

#FFXIV #FFXIV RP #Crystal Data Center #Crystal RP #Balmung RP #Mateus RP #on one hand it's drama on the other I can and will call a spade a spade or in this case a douchebag a douchebag #this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows me even a little

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randomshoes · 7 years

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I asked @evilelitist2 this question, and we both wondered what your thoughts were: How does one deal with the "practice what you preach" dilemma I seem to run into regarding socially responsible media consumption, the idea that if you want to talk about sexism or racism or any other -ism on the internet, consuming media that contains those elements is hypocritical and undermines your own personal integrity and the argument you're attempting to make?

Ohno no no no no no.

Much disagree.

That’s actually one of those ideas that deeply offends me onmultiple levels: as a fan, as an activist, as a critic, and as anartist.

I have a LOT of problems with this idea, so I will attempt toorganize them in a hopefully coherent manner.

From a fan perspective:

If you attempt this you will fail, and also you will be sad.

There is no such thing as a perfectly inoffensive piece of media(okay, maybe Undertale, but you can’t spend your life playingUndertale and doing nothing else). These ideas are tooprevalent in our society for it to be possible to ignore anythingthat even passively contains them. You will not be “allowed” toconsume any art at all, and you will end up a very bored human.

You will miss out on otherwise good pieces of art.

I love 1940s Hollywood and Eminem. Both contain ideas that I ammore than a little ideologically opposed to, yet I firmly believe mylife would be less happy and less rich if I had failed to experienceeither. Just because something, say, supports antiquated gender rolesdoesn’t mean that it is without any value. Anything involving Katharine Hepburn has inherent value.

From an activist perspective:

You will not understand the thingyou are fighting.

If Ipurposefully avoid sexist media, how will I be able to speak with anyauthority on the subject? How will I know what specific tropes orstereotypes are the biggest problem? How will I even know what I’masking creators to change? You can’t beat something you don’tunderstand.

How can you know for sure thatsomething is problematic until you experience it?

Thisreduces the “socially responsible media consumer” to making alltheir decisions based on rumor, second-hand information, and thegeneral consensus of people who havewatched it (also, those people had to watch it to tell you thatinformation, so are they hypocrites now?).

Let’s talk about The Social Network.

I knew someone in college who refused to watch this film because she had determined, on the basis of the trailer, that it wassexist. She cited the fact that there were scantily-clad women doing drugs insome shots and not much else. However, I suspect the fact that themain character is sexist was a contributing factor. (I think the bitwhere he spews sexist shit about his ex and then makes a programbased on rating the women on campus for their attractiveness was inthe trailer.) Except, I’ve seen TheSocial Network,and the entire film is about critiquing that guy’s worldview. Thosescenes of scantily-clad women doing drugs etc. exist to demonstratethat this is the only way these men know how to interact with women.The movie opens and closes with a very smart women telling Mark thathe needs to learn how to interact with humans in general and women inspecific. The film goes out of its way to make sure we understand howmessed up this is. Overall, I would call it a feminist film.

Theone scene I did find sexist (as well as unnecessary) was this one:

Still,I highly recommend that everyone see this film. It’s a great primeron the MRA and Nice Guy mindset. And also it’s just a really goodmovie.

Tosum up: first impressions can be wrong, and things are always morecomplicated than simply being sexist or not sexist. Ipersonally refuse to give over control of what I watch and what Ithink about it to people who aren’t me.

This mindset will lead people to reject social justicecriticism, and do it aggressively.

Think about it. If I’m either a sexistor a hypocrite for liking (or even watching) something with anysexist ideas, than I am now emotionally invested in loudly denyingthat there are any problems with a piece of media (or a media genre)at all. And then you get what is basically media nationalism.

Sound familiar? It should. This is themindset that Gamergaters and the Anita Sarkeesian haters have. Ifwe’re saying video games have some sexist ideas, then we are sayingthat they, personally, are sexist, and that they are not allowedto play video games anymore.This is one of the ideas I’ve been trying to fight.

How can we possibly convince anyone tothink critically about media if doing so means they have to give upthe things they love or feel guilty for loving them?

That’s not what we were “preaching” to begin with.

The purpose of social justicecriticism is not to tell people not to consume art; it’s to askpeople to think about art and about the ideas it contains. We’reasking the audience to think critically about what they’re watching(reading, playing) and the creators to think critically about whatthey’re producing. That’s it. So, as long as we’re all doing thefirst thing, and those of us who are artists are doing the secondthing, we are in fact practicing what we preach.

For the record: I’m not opposedto things like boycotting the Ghostin the Shellmovie, but that’s not actually about the content of the art so muchas the casting practices of Hollywood. It’s a tactic that attempts togive Hollywood a monetary incentive to actuallycast some fucking Asian actors in movies what the hell?

youtube

Also, it’s important to remember that choosing to see the movie is not a moral transgression or a sinagainst anybody.

From a critical perspective:

You are not required to be pure to criticize a piece of media,that’s just weird.

I know most of the world hasinternalized the whole “let he who is without sin cast the firststone” thing, but criticizing media isn’t really equivalent tostoning someone to death, and also I’m not a Christian so bite me. Tobe a critic you are not required to be a saint. To be a critic youare required to be good at analyzing media. That’s it.

How can you criticize something you haven’t experienced?

The very first thing anyone arguingwith you is going to say is “what the hell do you know?” and theywill be right.

Reading, watching, or playing something does not mean you agreewith it.

I’ve read Ender’s Game. @evilelitest2 has attempted to read Atlas Shrugged.Basically every film student in the universe has seen Birth of aNation. Professional filmcritics watch as many movies as possible. You’resupposed to have perspective and understand the entire industry.

You are not a hypocrite forengaging with something you disagree with.

Howelse do you develop critical thinking skills? If you’re never exposedto ideas you disagree with, your ideas will be simplistic and youwon’t be used to defending them.

From an artistic perspective:

We would be ignoring the entire history of art.

For most of human history people havebeen racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc. If we study art wewill see these things. We can and should address them, but we can’tdiscount an entire piece of art based on the fact that it expressesthese ideas. As artists, we need to learn from these things, and asart historians we need to learn about these things.

For example, I’ve heard people saythat Birth of a Nation shouldnot be taught in film classes.

Now, aside from the fact that ignoringhorrible aspects of history doesn’t make them go away, removing DWGriffith from a film curriculum would be like removing Shakespearefrom an English curriculum. He invented a huge part of the languagefilm uses to convey ideas. He was also a shitbag, and we should talkabout that, but we also have to talk about the form and content ofhis art, because it’s part of understanding how film works.

Experiencing problematic media helpsteach artists what NOT to do.

Ioften read badly written things on purpose, because it helps meclarify in my head what I don’t want to be. This can be quite easilyapplied to morally questionable things as well. We can tell youngartists not to make sexist art, but how do they know what that means?They may just say, “well, I’M not sexist, so it’s not a problem.”But if we show them an example of how unthinkingly reproducing tropesor not thinking through situations can lead to unfortunateimplications, they have a better chance of understanding us.

You will disincentivizeartists from creating sexist/racist/homophobic characters.

If I decide to write a sexistPOV character, even if the purpose of my book is to critique theirworldview, I will risk people deciding my book is sexist and shouldbe boycotted. This could be based on something as small as an out ofcontext quote. Here, I’ll do it right now. This is a quote from TheSocial Network:

“EricaAlbright’s a bitch. Do you think that’s because her family changedtheir name from Albrecht or do you think it’s because all B.U. Girlsare bitches? For the record, she may look like a 34C but she’sgetting all kinds of help from our friends at Victoria’s Secret.She’s a 34B, as in barely anything there. False advertising.”

See?This movie is totally sexist. Also it’s anti-German and hates BostonUniversity. No one should watch this movie ever.

Now,people can and will do this no matter what, because not everyonerealizes that the writer does not necessarily agree with theircharacters (argh), but if we start telling people that their moralfiber depends on preemptively writing off anything with the potentialto be offensive, then this will happen more frequently and with thesort of people who might otherwise read my theoretical book andunderstand it, or even come out of it with a better understanding ofwhy sexism is bad.

Art is not something you “consume” in the way you consumefood.

Watching Birthof a Nationdoes not raise my moral cholesterol. Thinking of it like that reducesthe piece of art to a one idea delivery service and you to anunthinking maw that accepts all ideas it’s fed. Art is complex andfull of possible interpretations, and you have a brain.

tl:dr

How do you deal with problematic media? You watch/read/play it, and then you talk about it.

Note: if we’re purely talking from acapitalistic, “vote with your money” perspective, then avoiding(recent) media whose existence you find morally abhorrent is a validtactic to try to change what art a corporation produces, but alwaysremember that it’s just that: a tactic. It is not a moral imperative.

PSSorry it took me so long to get to this one. It was such aninteresting question and I had so much to say and my asks kept pilingup with stupid MRA stuff that I thought I’d get that out of the wayfirst. Also it took forever to articulate and organize my ideas.

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habibialkaysani · 6 years

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okay, let me preface this with a little note about my identity. I am a queer, mentally ill muslim british cis woman of colour. specifically, I was born in britain and my parents both hail from bangladesh. I am not white or black or latinx. so my opinions will - understandably, I hope - be from the perspective I am offering based on the intersecting parts of my identity.

so, let’s start with that. as a nonblack woc, I think it’s pretty patronising to be told that you don’t have to be black to be a person of colour. I know that. I don’t need that explained to me when I am literally not even black to start with. nowhere in my post did I say a mixed race pairing requires a black person. of course it would be interracial if someone was latinx. rene/thea is interracial. so is cisco/caitlin, and amy/jake, and those are just off the top of my head. pairings involving asian people are also interracial - wally/linda, for instance, and lena/jack. and while not latinx myself, I am aware of the issues latinx people face, enough for me to know that of course they are people of colour. I never said that latinx people face the exact same struggles as black people. I know they don’t, although they do overlap at least insofar that they’re groups that deserve far better.

my focus on black people in this post, btw, was partly to address the antiblackness I see in my own racial community. but also, me making the focus on antiblackness in my post does nothing in and of itself to dismiss other poc or, as you’ve suggested, throw other poc under the bus.

and that brings me to my main point. as far as I was aware, for a character to be considered racial representation and thus a person of colour onscreen, I thought the person portraying that character had to be, at the very, very least, a person of colour also and preferably also at least the same race as the character purports to be.

let me put this another way. as a desi woman, I would not have considered jack spheer to be desi if he was portrayed by a white actor who’s a bit tanned, calls himself bengali onscreen and calls his mother “amma” and, idk, eats rice and curry every day, and thus I would not consider him bengali representation because he was whitewashed. I was under the impression that a similar logic could be applied here, because, yes, maggie calls herself nonwhite and andrew kreisberg called her latina and she spoke spanish to her father, but floriana lima is still white. if you personally feel like whitewashed representation counts as representation, fine. but to me, sanvers is just another white wlw ship that the racist white non straight fandom flocked to because god forbid they give an interracial ship, irrespective of genders, a chance. I listed it because I was trying to make that very point - and, absolutely, if maggie were portrayed by an actual latinx actress, I would never suggest that sanvers is the same representation wise as clexa, wayhaught, cophine, avalance, etc., because there would be a person of colour who could potentially make the pairing important and groundbreaking and different. but she’s not. floriana is white. chyler is white.

now, I don’t know a lot of latinx people on here, so I’m not sure what the general consensus is on this. but I have seen latinx people speak out against maggie being whitewashed. at the same time, I fully acknowledge that I am not latinx myself, so if you think that representation that is so watered down and in your own words flawed is still adequate, fine. but put simply, me slighting maggie sawyer or sanvers with regards to racial representation isn’t me slighting latinx people at all. because maggie, to me, at least, and to a fair few others, isn’t truly latinx when she is portrayed by a tanned white actress. just like an ~exotic-looking white woman does not desi representation make. *coughamyjacksoncough*

I feel like poc should be in solidarity with each other. and if I said anything against samantha arias, rosa diaz, amy santiago, cisco ramon, rene ramirez or any of the other latinx characters on tv who are genuinely portrayed by actual latinxs, I do apologise. but in this instance, I can’t in good conscience consider maggie a woman of colour when the actress portraying her is white and she is clearly whitewashed, and therefore, I don’t see sanvers as a truly interracial relationship when they clearly are not in reality.

fandom racism is a huge problem, I agree. but you pointing this out doesn’t help. in this instance, I’m pretty sure it was supergirl and floriana lima who whitewashed a character who was meant to be a woc, not the fandom. the fandom whitewashing actual poc played by poc is what you should be calling out - zari tomaz, for instance, is often whitewashed in edits, and people assume sameen shaw is white even though she’s persian. people lauding chyler leigh and caity lotz, two straight white women, for being lgbt ~allies when maisie richardson sellers and keiynan lonsdale, two non-straight black people, are right there being as straight and white as a rainbow, is fandom racism. the 100 fandom practically starting a riot over a fridged white lesbian who wore brownface and a bindi and then staying radio silent or, worse, defending poussey washington’s death is what you call fandom racism.

I get that you mean well, but I did not say anywhere in my post that I felt nonblack poc were in any way less important than black people. me focusing on one race of people in no way diminishes the importance of other (nonwhite) races. if you truly consider maggie sawyer a woman of colour, good for you. I don’t, and I won’t until they decide to recast her with an actual latinx person (which is highly unlikely). so please don’t assume all other poc share your view, and don’t label my behaviour as ignorant or careless.

- same anon as before, that's understanable. and i'm sorry for the racism that you do get. i'm glad you're able to just ignore it, and that most people respect you. (and for the a*dena,l*xa,s*ra thing) that makes sense. i like them all as characters. but the fandom saying that l*xa is wearing the helm of awe? (not sure if that's what they call it, but it is a bindi, that's just awful. s*ra being shipped with only white women, makes sense. i haven't watched lot for awhile. - p1

p2. but i did hear about the fandom shipping her with “new” character called a*ya? ev*? i’m not sure. and i was a bit confused, if they had like 5 lines together. (if ev*) now that i think about it, she is white right?

yeah, her name is ava, and they’re clearly building up to it and that’s - whatever, but just. five white women and one fleeting poc (leonard) and one woc who isn’t even mentioned by name this season does not diversity make.

it’s sad that that more subtle racism exists, but what’s sadder is that fandoms on the whole don’t want to admit that it’s a thing and that we’re complicit in that racism. and I say “we” because I’m guilty of it too. I remember when I was watching poi and I was for some reason reluctant to ship carter with reese. just like how I was initially reluctant to ship sara with jax romantically. even tho in both cases the ships had wonderful dynamics. I’m not saying that everyone who brotps them is racist. but this refusal to view black people as love interests for white people is definitely a worrying trend - look at finn in star wars, for example, or even iris west with barry allen and to some extent amaya jiwe with nate heywood. it’s this less blatant racism that most if not the vast majority of us are guilty of to some degree that I think we need to recognise in ourselves and try to do better with. and that doesn’t mean you can’t ship sara with ava, or kara with lena or cat, or, hell, even maggie with alex, but I just think we also have to recognise that that racist bias exists and is a real thing, and, I don’t know, just try to do better by taking a step back and seeing where that racism inherent in all of us is manifesting itself.

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