fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2954 ]

[ SECRET POST #2954 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2954 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Phineas & Ferb]

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[Roger Delgado]

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(Dangan Ronpa)

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[All Time Low]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 024 secrets from Secret Submission Post #422.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What she said was

"If you mean the cast is primarily white, it’s the 40s. Which is more offensive to you: black help and blacks in service, or no blacks? I would like to see more POC, yes, but that was the time, and I’m not sure I’d like to see more POC if they’re always going to be in service."

Not the best thing in the world to say, and she did apologize, but not the ~worst thing ever~ like people are treating it as, and given her history of inclusivity and attempts at dealing with situations like racism, and what-not in her books, I'd have hoped that people would have given her the benefit of a doubt.

Nope, burn her.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if most blacks in the 40s had been professors and lawyers and doctors and art historians, we wouldn't need all this social justice shit so bad.

While some *were* those things, most of them were stuck with the crappy menial work. Historical fact is racist though, you know.

Superheroes aren't Historical Fact. If they bent 'history' to the degree that they did, a bit more couldn't hurt.

You realize that if you "bent" history that way, and got rid of the actual situation of the 1940's, tumblr would be crying about covering up and erasing historical racism?

Which I actually agree with. You can have a black superhero. Hell, you can have a 1940's all-black cast of superheroes. But you don't have to erase the socioeconomic realities of the time and the racism present in that time to do that.

Likewise with writing women back then. Or lgbt+ people. Or people with disabilities.

I'm not familiar with the show...do they just not have black people at all? Not facing discrimination or anything?

From the first two episodes, which is all I saw, they have one significant black character, who's the baddy in the first episode. He owns an extremely swank nightclub and faces no notable discrimination at all. His race just doesn't come up. But he's also helping smuggle weapons (as, to be fair, are a bunch of white people) and then he gets killed by the evil secret society people.

But he is played by Andre Royo who owns.

There's like one character in the fucking thing who could have been black and isn't.

Unless you'd like to have Jarvis be black, which seems counterproductive. But Howard Stark is established and doesn't basically everyone else except for Angie work for the top-secret spy agency (and is also a complete dickbag)? I mean, it's a show with a really small cast, comparatively. It is a bit more understandable to me that they would have difficulties in this regard.

People were wrong to dogpile her for that, but you know... there is a point both sides are missing here. The fact that MOST black people might not have been "professors and lawyers and doctors and art historians" is beside the point in a work of fiction. Look at Pierce's characters. Were they all typical and/or representative of people in their era? Surely if you can write a whole series about a teenage girl who disguises herself as a squire and becomes a knight--something which most teenage girls did not do in medieval times, mind you!-- why is a black lawyer any weirder?

It's not weirder. It would be weirder though, if you did that to all the black characters, and totally erased the racism of the time, making it as though there were no special barriers for women or PoC regarding certain careers.

You said it right there--DISGUISES her self to be a squire. Not "a magical land where all the girls can be knights, and no one thinks it's weird and she doesn't have to hide her gender".

John the guy with the laser beams? He's a black lawyer? Sure, maybe he did his undergrad at Lincoln University. But Susie, and Jeremiah, and Robert, and Frankie-with-the-teleporting-powers? Yeah, it's going to be weird if they're a judge, doctor, police officer, and Hollywood heartthrob respectively. That's highly statistically unlikely for the time, and it erases the racism and sexism of the time.

nayrt

"It's not weirder. It would be weirder though, if you did that to all the black characters, and totally erased the racism of the time, making it as though there were no special barriers for women or PoC regarding certain careers."

Who was suggesting that be done, though? Nobody that I could see, which makes me wonder why you'd conjure up such a strange argument that takes the suggestion that ONE black lawyer isn't that weird and turns it into your imaginary argument about erasing racism and making all the black characters lawyers. Your imaginary argument (that no one but you has suggested) is very silly, indeed. But since it's got nothing to do with the original argument, that's irrelevant.

I dunno, I kind of resent the implication that service class is a negative or meaningless role for a character to have in a story. It doesn't require being a joke or wallpaper, and it wouldn't stop a character from playing a relevant role and having a great personality and motivations. That attitude seems to be coming from both sides of this debate and I don't like it.

I dunno, I kind of resent the implication that service class is a negative or meaningless role for a character to have in a story.

Why? It's not meaningless, and a service-class person can play a relevant role, have a great personality, and be a great person.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing that an entire race or gender was stuck doing a certain kind of work--especially when it's work that is more dangerous, more repetitive, dirty, physically demanding, and lower compensation, than other work.

There's nothing wrong with being a teacher, secretary, operator, or nurse. There IS something wrong with those being the only careers open to women in the post-war 1940's. Covering that up and having Jill the Nuclear Engineer, Carrie the Neurosurgeon, Amanda the Plumber, Sarah the Police Commissioner, and Mayor Alice McGraw as the superhero characters in a 1940's show would tick me off a little. Almost none of us could be those things then, and even worse, we quite often can't be those things now.

The women that did those things back then were truly exceptional, and the bullshit they had to go through was often tremendous, and that shouldn't be erased because "fantasy".

I'm sorry, I think some wires are getting crossed here? Everything you just said is what I agree with, that service class roles aren't inherently shameful or useless. I definitely wasn't implying that groups of people being slotted into specific roles in real life is ever okay, so how dare minorities ever complain about wanting access to other roles. I meant that in fiction, a black character shouldn't have to be either upper-class or not in a period piece at all because being service-class is so icky, because that's bullshit.

NAYRT

I think the concern is more that having black characters in service-class can really easily play into a bunch of old racist memes, especially if those are the only roles they get. There's nothing wrong with service-class roles but I can understand why people are touchy given that used to be how film worked for black people.

Yeah, that's true. I guess I got my back up over the idea that the roles have to play into Magical Negro-type shit, instead of being as important and dynamic as the upper-class characters. But that's not something that happens with servant characters of any race in most stories.

Would that it were, would that it were.

ayrt

I think you're right about the wires crossed. I thought you were calling me out for implying service roles were bad, like I was being classist or something. Sorry, I've been spending too much time on tumblr I guess ):

Shit, yeah, I was calling out Pierce and her detractors on tumblr for implying that in the link somewhere in this thread, not you. I should have replied there instead of making it seem like I was coming after you, my bad.

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[ SECRET POST #2954 ]

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