Why Is Society Intent on Erasing Black People in Fantasy and Sci-fi’s Imaginary Worlds?

theroot.com/why-is-society-intent-on-erasing-black-people-in-fantas-1820214381

Over the weekend I binge-watched 3%, a dystopian sci-fi Netflix original set in Brazil. The plot was rife with quirks and unexpected turns, but the biggest surprise of all was that the diversity in the show reflected the diversity in Brazil. The cast featured myriad shades and races, absent the stereotypical casting, such as the confinement of black and brown actors and actresses to supporting characters with botched, surface-level backstories.

This is what accurate representation looks like. This show reminded me of other shows on Netflix, like Sense8 and Black Mirror, whose colorful casts and stellar ratings demonstrate that diversity works. So what’s wrong with the rest of Hollywood?

I grew up on fantasy and science fiction, devouring books, television shows and film built under their umbrella. I stood in hourslong lines at bookstores waiting for sequels to be released, finishing thousand-page novels before the sun came up the next day. I went in full costume to midnight premieres, tickets in hand that I had purchased weeks prior. I wrote elaborate fan fiction and spent hours online moderating forums for people like me.

I wasn’t just any groupie, a random passerby stopping in to look—I was a buff. I was ride-or-die. King Kong didn’t have anything on me, because to me, a black girl at an all-white school, these genres that celebrated difference and rooted for the underdog were my safe haven.

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These worlds gave me the belief that different was OK. Perhaps it just meant that one day I, too, would get a visit from Hagrid informing me that I was actually a witch. I would speak a goodbye curse over my haters, afflicting them with poorly timed gas or the constant sensation of having to sneeze. Then Hagrid and I would take off in his flying motorcycle, pettily cackling at everyone who never believed in me. That would make everything—the microaggressive comments from my peers, the feeling of not fitting in, the surprise of my teachers at my intelligence—all worth it because I would finally belong somewhere.

In these fictional worlds, anything could happen: magic, dragons, travel through space and time. Anything, that is, except diversity. The more I read and watched the genres, the more I felt just the way I had at school. As if I did not belong. It came as a huge blow that these mythical worlds that I immersed myself in had not, in their entire theory or practice, created a place for me.

When there was a “place” for me, it was as a marginal, peripheral character. I didn’t get to defeat Lord Voldemort. I didn’t get to mount dragons and burn my enemies to a crisp by uttering “Dracarys.” I didn’t even get to travel to Narnia. My roles were different.

I was Dean Thomas, appearing ever so often in the halls of Hogwarts, but never enough to truly be seen. I was Daenerys’ personal assistant, whose insight, wisdom and strength were valuable enough to be leaned on, but not exceptional enough to actually be the Breaker of Chains. In worst cases, I was a villain, a miscreant or no one at all—an extra fleeting through a scene too quickly to even be registered.

So why do fantasy and science fiction lack diversity?

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Sometimes the erasure of black people in these genres masquerades under the guise of “historical accuracy.” Fantasy and sci-fi often draw inspiration from ancient Celtic, Norse, Greek and medieval European culture. Therefore, disgruntled white fans often use this knowledge to perpetuate the white nonsense that black people should not exist in these universes.

Such fans cited this notion as evidence in their racist tirades against Idris Elba when he was cast as Heimdall in Marvel’s Thor. “But Thor is based on Norse mythology, so Heimdall can’t be black,” they cried, as hot, salty white tears streamed down their faces. Their imaginations could stretch for alien attacks, a man with a magic hammer and interdimensional travel, yet could not encompass a black man playing a make-believe character.

Another reason this racial disparity in fantasy and sci-fi media and literature exists is that black people are often not thought of as a target audience for these tales. This fallacy has been promoted so aggressively that we have started to believe it, teasing those among us who are interested in magic and mythical creatures by calling these black folks white. However, this fallacy is exactly that: a fallacy.

Platforms like Black Nerd Problems and Black Girl Nerds have built their empires on black fantasy audiences. The hashtags #DemThrones and #ThronesYall were curated purposely for black people to engage with one another on Sunday evenings after our wigs have been snatched by the Night King. We are here, and it’s time we were acknowledged.

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Transformative change in the way fantasy and science fiction are immortalized on the screen could take place with an increase in black writers. According to a Color of Change study, only 35 percent of writers’ rooms have at least one black writer on staff, and within that 35 percent, less than 5 percent of the writers in the rooms are black. Navigating race may be intimidating to white writers—I mean, could you imagine if Marvel’s Wolverine, a mutant who lived through the last two centuries, was black? The writer would have to situate him in history, which may prove difficult for someone whose ancestors were living their best lives during those times.

However, there are much simpler approaches that white writers could use to include black people in their chronicles. Superheroes could be diversified relatively effortlessly. You’re trying to tell me that Superman, a man who gets his power from the sun, isn’t black? Tell that to the melanin of 1,000 generations of my ancestors.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Hogwarts competes in the Tri-Wizard tournament with two other institutions of magic: Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Either of these could have been depicted as a historically black wizardry school, especially since J.K. Rowling herself has said that magic originated in Africa. In fiction, as in reality, black people are the ghostwriters of everything wonderful.

Writing whiteness is no challenge. Whiteness in fantasy just is. There’s an assumption that we black people must make a case for our existence in fantasy. We are required to hype black characters, promote them endlessly and buy the characters’ merchandise in order to be given more. For our obsession with T’Challa, we were rewarded with a solo Black Panther flick, the HBCU of Marvel movies. In unreal worlds, just as in the real world, we live in a constant fear that if we do not make enough noise, we will be erased completely.

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Write your own books then you lazy spooks

Nigger.

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This eradication occurs in many forms. Occasionally, an author will choose different central figures, ornately depicting people of color as main characters. However, when these novels are made into major motion pictures or television series, Hollywood’s overwhelming whiteness arrives like a storm to rain on our parade. Roles written for us become whitewashed.

In both The Girl With All the Gifts and Avatar: The Last Airbender, white actors and actresses were cast as protagonists whom the author explicitly described as people of color. In other circumstances, roles written for us are diminished. The Hunger Games had several phenomenal black characters in print, but on-screen they were weak, diluted and allotted minimal screen time.

The most ironic part of all of this is that while fantasy and sci-fi fail to produce meaningful black characters, the plots seem to echo the black experience. In X-Men, mutants face marginalization, violent hate crimes and structural policies created to impede the upward mobility of their community. Even main characters Magneto’s and Charles “Professor X” Xavier’s crusades for mutant rights seem eerily familiar. The militant Magneto is often painted as a villain because he aims to achieve power and opportunities for mutants “by any means necessary.” Professor X’s nonviolent approach stresses educating and reconciling with humans as an agent of change—which is often referred to as “Xavier’s dream.” Does this conjure visions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X? It should. It’s a shame it did not conjure more roles for people of color.

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This parallel is not unique. The Planet of the Apes series invokes an Exodus-like liberation of apes from enslavement and persecution, yet the few humans (both ape allies and oppressors) who do appear in the movie are white. In the Harry Potter series, Hermione is a member of a community of witches and wizards who lack a purely magical lineage. These individuals, derogatorily classified as “mudbloods,” are frequent targets of harassment and bigotry.

While reading Rowling’s famous series, I always took Hermione’s curly hair, ancestry and bouts of intelligent sass as signs that she was, no doubt, a sister who, in her free time, could be found leading Hogwarts’ Black Student Union meetings, organizing #WeTooAreHogwarts movements and resisting pure-blood supremacy (by the Trumps—I mean the Malfoys). Yet when she came to the screen, she was as white as snow.

Somehow, our experience, our struggle, our story, makes its way into every fantasy and sci-fi novel, television show and film, but we are nowhere to be found. We are there in the minute details, there in the theory, but never there in reality. For even in imaginary tales, our narrative matters, but we don’t. We remain invisible and unworthy in both this world and the ones created in others’ minds.

Just because the world is magic doesn’t mean we aren’t real. What is real, however, is the pain felt when dark faces watch screens, searching to identify with someone, anyone, and find nothing.

I don't care

It's white people in the West buying this shit most of the time so they get represented most of the time just like with Asians and Asian media

Its not whietys fault there isnt a strong African media presence in the world

Fantasy worlds are usually based on Europe, regardless of what the BBC says there were no blacks in Europe. No dragons or magic either, but the people at the time believed there was.

Science Fiction usually represents a future where humanity has gotten smart enough to travel space, that's not going to happen if we have a bunch of blacks in our society.

>Why Is Society Intent on Erasing Black People in Fantasy and Sci-fi’s Imaginary Worlds?
I don't know but I'm glad we do

Because Black people as a group tend not to watch sci-fi or fantasy, not because they are not represented, but because it ruins arguments they use like 'muh dick'.

If black people want to be in sci-fi and fantasy. they should do what White people did. Write it.

Medea Goes to Space

Sci-fi is usually full of ethnic diversity. Maybe not the Young Adult trash that this bitch reads though

"Erasing" implies they were there to begin with

>getting your self-esteem from your representation in a tv show

There's plenty of sci-fi with diverse casts. I'd bet that it's also pretty proportional to their actual representation in society as well. Fantasy, on the other hand, is often set in historically "correct" world (knights and barbarians, etc.) and they were generally northern european culturally.

This is like saying, "I really like barbershop movies but I feel like I'm underrepresented in them and that needs to change".

What is this person even talking about. Sci-fi has traditionally been the MOST diverse genre casting wise.

Please explain why other races need to compensate for Black people's lack of ability outside of sports?

Can't do well in politics? Blame White peoplel have them fix it for us.
Can't into landlord? Blame White people, have them fix it.
Can't find a job? Blame White people, have them cripple themselves so we can have equal footing.

How about if Black people want something they just go create it for themselves? How fucking feeble and pathetic do you need to be to blame everyone for your problems then ask those very same people for help? Grow up, you fucking race of babies, no wonder Sup Forums is the way it is. Black people either need to look after themselves within the system THEY HAVE FUCKING CHOSEN or just fuck off and die.

Have africans ever even conceptualize an advance future before meeting whitey?

Anyone who needs a movie character with the same skin as them to relate to or enjoy the film is an idiot with zero personality. I enjoy plenty of Asian films, and when I'm watching im not thinking
>man this movie definitely needs a white person
Blacks are the most self entitled cunts on the planet, make your own fucking movies

I don't get this thing where people deliberately go to the website they know they don't agree with. Just to cherry pick issues.

Why are niggers so annoying and whiny?

>Write your own books

/thread

Because you literally make them like that, stupid americans.

>write
das racist

Like you would read them or watch them if they were put on film. This comment is really shorthand for "I don't care about your inclusion in things we have in common."

This

Whites didn't even start conceptualizing an advanced future until over a century after they met blacks. Europe was convinced that the apocalypse was just around the corner, all they had to do was retake the Holy Land and it would be case closed. Science Fiction only exists because of Victorian agnosticism and materialism.

I'm not a burger.
Dumb bitch wants everything to be one of Heinlein's shitty books.
>look at our hero
>isn't he cool?
last 5 pages
>and he's a nigger, fooled you with that cover didn't i?

This is the shittiest attempt at raceblaming and baiting ive ever seen. Go to hell op and stay there. Nothing you wrote has any actual basis, your just projecting your own victim complex.

I read shit like this and I fully agree with Sup Forums that these "people" need to be immediately gassed. Then I go outside and realize real life is not retards screeching on the internet.

lmao that bitch would go running back to her all white neighborhood after spending 1 week in brazil

>real life is not retards screeching on the internet
No, it's retards making policy behind your back that will fuck you in the ass for "offending" speech.

Gandalf the White Wizard vs Sauron the Dark Lord
Tolkien You Racist Bastard

>I stood in hourslong lines at bookstores waiting for sequels to be released
>Fantasy and Science Fiction
>Hourslong lines on book release
No you fucking didn't. Sci-fi and Fantasy books have always been pulp shit that never had any real draw to the mainstream. She should have talked about mailing away cut-out forms from magazines/comic books.
>these genres that celebrated difference and rooted for the underdog
Fiction that roots for the underdog? Wow that's a novel concept that could only be found in science fiction or fantasy. I legitimately can't think of much fantasy or sci fi that celebrates differences. Star Trek is probably the closest, but it doesn't really celebrate difference so much as it includes diversity naturally into the narrative.

Ah, and as I continue reading I see that she's talking about YA shit like Harry Potter or Hunger Games. She references "The Planet of the Apes series" and clearly means the recent movies and not the actual fucking source material. What a fucking piece of shit. 'popular fiction' should go back to being a derogatory term.

>What is real, however, is the pain felt when dark faces watch screens, searching to identify with someone, anyone, and find nothing.
This pisses me off the absolute most. If you can only identify with characters because of their skin colour, you are a tremendous racist. This bitch even talks about how many characters in sci fi and fantasy go through similar plights as those that historically faced blacks yet she can't identify with them because they aren't dark skinned? I find myself identifying with characters because of their outlooks, opinions, or the lives they live. I've never once looked at a character and said "wow, this guy is white and also a guy just like me. I can connect with him now!".

>Sense8
>stellar ratings

ummm try again sweetie

We all know what orcs were an allegory for.

Actually I'm quite looking forward to Marlon James' upcoming fantasy series. A Brief History of Seven Killings was really good. I just get sick of whiny oppression porn like this book I recently read called The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

This. You hate niggers so much but if they actually got off their asses to make something you'd still bitch and complain about it anyways.

>This pisses me off the absolute most. If you can only identify with characters because of their skin colour, you are a tremendous racist. This bitch even talks about how many characters in sci fi and fantasy go through similar plights as those that historically faced blacks yet she can't identify with them because they aren't dark skinned? I find myself identifying with characters because of their outlooks, opinions, or the lives they live. I've never once looked at a character and said "wow, this guy is white and also a guy just like me. I can connect with him now!".

I’ve noticed this as well, it’s only niggers who say it as well. The truth is that niggers are just simple minded racists who only care about skin colour. White racists on the other hand use things like IQ and crime statistics.

It is strange when I remember that I used to not be racist myself. That was long before I ever heard of niggers.

I read both of these pretty recently and I completely agree with you.
Underground Railroad fucking sucked. I have no idea how it got so much praise.
People were unironically saying shit like "In Whitehead's ingenious imagining, the underground railroad is -- get this -- literally a train network that runs under the earth. FUcking fantastic."

Brief History of Seven Killings was awesome. James' book John Crow's Devil was alsoreally good.

Spotted the niggers. Nobody would fucking care.

Why are blacks so open with their refusal to create any of this shit, and instead sit there like lazy porchmonkeys and say "GIBE ME ROLES AND DEM PAYCHECKS BECAUSE OF INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY?"


They're the ONLY ones not even trying to do shit. All they do is sit on their asses and demand diversity-money to be in other people's creations.


Yet when it comes to music there's probably 1,000 black-owned record labels and they're all over the whole fucking spectrum of the business, yet they refuse to apply that same thinking to movies and TV.

WHY?

Weren't the X-Men a parable about being LGBT? Wasn't Magneto's storyline a cautionary, Israel and Holocaust inspired tale about how inherited trauma can drive people with good intentions to do evil?

Wasn't the Mudblood/pure-blood theme focusing on more nebulous issues of class stratification and overcoming status barriers in England? Weren't the Weasleys, with their poverty and their "blood traitor" label, more sympathetic and more tragic than Hermione with her dentist parents and her nearsighted critiques of things she didn't understand? Aren't the conversations about how house-elves don't want what Hermione thinks they want a commentary on patronizing white liberals who misunderstand the problems of others and have savior complexes?

In short, does every story about fighting bigotry and challenging the destiny that others ordain for you have to be coopted into the black experience?

Cont.

That's probably a modern interpretation of it, but it used to be a parable about race relations and how quick people turn to fear-mongering when things turn to shit.


And Xavier was this omni-present force always having to deal with the social consequences of other mutants behaving badly and making the masses wanting that threat eliminated.

Look up vintage issue Uncanny XMen #200 where Magneto gets put on trial for crimes against humanity where he then basically calls out that it's humanity that should be brought up on trial for crimes against him.

...

Black Panther is cool because it imagines a country freed from the real atrocities perpetrated on black people by almost every other race in history. It posits a highly technological, sophisticated nation of Africans with a developed Egyptic cosmology, who conduct a xenophobic and insular foreign policy that even leads them to ally with Latveria against the actions of Reed and other "heroes".

None of that has anything to do with Das Racis Gimme Dem Programs. Wakanda is a thought experiment in untouched African dignity, not a defense of thuggish race politics in America. Wakandans would hate black Americans that acted ghetto. Civil War presented that well. Look at how uncomfortable the Falcon is when interacting with T'challa, who barely acknowledges him if at all. Wakandans do not see themselves as champions of diversity and racial equality; they see themselves as better than everyone else, and uninterested in anything so foolish as culture or race mixing.

Is this copypasta?

because they want the movie to be profitable and successful

>black people are the victims of every other race.

Bullshit. They're the original slavers. The richest man in history (Mansa Musa) is a black slaver who owned fuck tons of gold. Africa has been developed then re-devloped time and tie again for the past 300 years, and they keep tearing it down with their petty tribal in-fighting.

And what is Wakanda? "WE SPACESHIPS NOW" while we ignore all the famine, poverty, chimping criminals, and other bullshit of our fellow Africans for whom we tell the "evil races" to take care of?

Great fucking country. They must be a proud people.

Then stop writing clickbait and pitch a show to Netflix, stupid cunt.

I’d be 100% supportive if niggers got off their asses and started taking care of themselves instead of whatever the fuck they’re doing now.
*nae naes*

Not true. I WANT them to do their own thing. They do it in music, so why not TV and film?

>Black Mirror
>rest of Hollywood.

Talk about reddit spacing.

Blacks have discovered that being useless and demanding gibs is a very profitable career
The liberals want to hand them companies, money, roles, power, WHOLE FUCKING COUNTRIES, etc

Better to rule in hell than to be a nigger in heaven

It's always black women that are the biggest proponents of SJW shit. Probably because literally nobody in the world wants them so all they have is a life of bitterness.

Have black people official become female tier?

>waaaaaah I want this I want that
>ok...go ahead then
>no, you do it for me

You wouldn't be writing this without us, instead you would be dying in your mudhut.

Usually people say it's white women

Its not my responsibility to make entertainment for dumb niggers who can't make it for themselves and its not my responsibility to watch the shit they make if I don't want to. You faggot.
If it was interesting I'd watch it. If it wasn't, I wouldn't. Doesn't change the fact that black people like the dumb cunt who wrote this article want things to be done for them.

Like another user mentioned, nobody has problems listen to their music. What's you response to that?

>I can't identify with a character unless they are the same gender/race/sexuality as me

Nazis ?

Are there even any fantasy or sci-fi worlds written by black authors?

youre being just as whiny though

>I HATE WHITES, but
>i copy their sense of fashion
>i steal their hair extensions
>i straighten my hair
>i wear yoga pants unironically
>i wear makeup
>i get a perm
>i live in a suburb

middle class niggers are so stupid

...

This. Nobody wants to see niggers. Not even niggers wants to see niggers.

>youre being just as whiny though
Abut what?

What they say:
>Why Is Society Intent on Erasing Black People in Fantasy and Sci-fi’s Imaginary Worlds?
What they mean:
>Why Don't White People Write More Black People Stories for Black People Instead?

...

K>middle class niggers are so stupid
>niggers are so stupid
ftfy

I don't, I do however complain about the forays they make into creative areas that are entirely juvenile. The number of comics and dime store novels out there by blacks that are nothing more than WE WUZ is overwhelming and essentially poisons the well. I know of a rather small, but prolific, writer who only writes black self-inserts with different Anime inspired window dressing. He's done black self-inserts of Not-DBZ. Black self-inserts of Not-Bleach. Black self-inserts of Not-One Piece. It becomes particularly agonizing to even look at because he usually stereotype the cultures that he lifts from to use in his stories. The DBZ one for instance has all of his characters dolled up like pharaohs. It's baffling in its inaccuracies.

And this a man I know. I know him in real-life, and I despise what he's doing. This isn't to say in the same sphere that blacks cannot make interesting or unique stories. It's just that they don't have an interest in the field. Consequently I do not believe that anyone should be forced to pander to a group who overwhelmingly doesn't care about the genre.

Dwayne McDuffie made Static (Static Shock), and Static is a good character. However, Dwayne is dead and didn't really do much else that found acclaim beyond his creation of Static. Dwayne was also black, if it wasn't abundantly clear.

No one is saying that a black guy cannot write good genre fiction, it's just that not many have done it in the first place and it's difficult to say without bias that one has made a piece of good genre fiction.

>muh representation in movies

why do women and brown people always complain about inconsequential stuff ?

upvoted

>be American brutha
>play Witcher 3 with a setting inspired after medieval Europe mainly Eastern Europe
>OOGA BOOGA WHERE DA KANGZ AT, FUCKING WHITEY

Thanks reddit

no problem support my patreon as well

She litterally writes this:
>According to a Color of Change study, only 35 percent of writers’ rooms have at least one black writer on staff, and within that 35 percent, less than 5 percent of the writers in the rooms are black.

Its whites fault that black ppl dont write books it seems.

/Thread

I think the issue really is that they want to be included within these fictional world's. They want to have the right to be able to exist without it being a huge racial issue from people quick to yell "based on/inspired by X white mythos so you can't exist here!" When ultimately it's a fictional story and they could exist just as well as any other race. Think of it like a school play about Peter pan but because that's based on a European fairytale, only the white students got to play in it. We of all races and cultures know about it, enjoy it and would like to take part but are barred because of our race of all things? So, black people lash out against it because they always feel at the bottom and left out.

Blacks don't like sci-fi and sci-fi is almost exclusively written by whites.

>Like you would read them or watch them if they were put on film.

I thought this was about a nigger wanting to watch other niggers in these movies. Why is that not enough, why do white people have to like it too?

>Why Is Society Intent on Erasing Black People in Fantasy and Sci-fi’s Imaginary Worlds?
Because white people are being erased irl

But there are plenty of blacks in science fiction though

I would unironically like to see some fantasy shows/books set in tribal/pre-colonial Africa. They have all kinds of crazy legends about magic and spirits and shit that I'm sure that a great epic could be written in that setting.

I'd write them myself but I'm white and that would be cultural appropriation.

You cant erase something that wasn't there in the first place.

was just about to say that. minus the spooks part. i'll only listen to complaining if i KNOW they tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and tried some more and failed some more. not when people complain, after doing nothing about it, ever, and expect others to change for them. i mean, i've only seen a handful of native's in film and vidgegames, but i won't complain about it untill i or someone like me actually tries to do something about it. and last i checked, which was never, no one was doing shit.

I wish whites would write stories from my perspective.