Luke Cage and the Racial Empathy Gap

So, upon rewatching Luke Cage, I discovered something very very interesting.

I know there’s been a lot of talk about Luke Cage’s respectability politics, and his grand/corny speeches (some of which I really enjoyed, if I’m being honest). But I noticed that Luke Cage acts like a completely different person around white people than he does around Black people.

W.E.B. Du Bois noted this phenomenon in his book The Souls of Black Folk, and named it “Double consciousness” in which Black people are aware that we’re being watched and judged while in the presence of white people. There is an added pressure to act a certain way, that isn’t present with other Black people.

Now what’s interesting about Luke Cage (as a character, mind you) is the fact that Luke only really saves his speeches for black youth/people who’re on the wrong side of the law, or the tracks, or who’re currently hurting his/their community.

But when he encounters white people who’re guilty of the same transgressions, Luke simply washes his hands of them (or reacts violently)

In Luke Cage’s entire series, he only really interacts with 3 white people in total (the officer at Seagate: Albert Rackam, Misty’s late partner Scarfe, and Noah Burstein, the man who gave Luke his powers.)

And each man listed above has, in their own way worked to harm Luke or his community. Rackham forced Luke (at the time Carl) into being a gladiator for him through threatening Luke’s friend Squabbles..

Luke never gave Rackham a speech about “being a good cop” or “being a good person.” Luke instead got Rackham fired, and in so doing protected Seagate prisoners (most of whom were black) from Rackham’s exploitation.

When Scarfe confessed to Luke he murdered Chico Diaz, Luke responded with nearly killing Scarfe (and Claire talked him out of it).

When Burstein revealed to have targeted Carl specifically for his experiments (having Reva scout him, having Rackham force him into being a gladiator, and ultimately lying to Luke about the intentions of his work) Luke responded with destroying Burstein’s barn.

Now compare this with how Luke Cage deals with the black people who work to harm either himself, Harlem, or the people close to Luke (specifically Cottonmouth, Mariah Dillard, Diamondback, and the variety of black men who work under them.)
Sure, Luke Cage gives smack downs to various henchmen, but Luke Cage actively extends more empathy and possibility for redemption to black criminals than he does to white “heroes.”

lol nigger

This is also shown through his interactions with Jessica in Jessica Jones and Danny Rand in The Defenders. After discovering Jessica’s hand in Reva’s death, Luke Cage is visibly disgusted and at the end of JJ season 1 he leave’s Hell’s Kitchen and cuts Jessica out of his life. When Luke and Danny meet each other for the first time, Luke calls Danny out on his white privilege and how he’s been using it to beat on the lowest henchmen of The Hand, when he could be using his access to take the battle to higher echelons of the organization. I think this may be the one speech he gives to a white person in the MCU canon so far, and Luke still doesn’t extend the same amount of empathy towards Danny that he does with others. Instead, in his speech to Danny, Luke focuses on how Danny Rand is actively hurting Luke’s community.

Think about how reacts when he first enters Harlem’s Paradise tells Cottonmouth that Luke is going to protect Harlem from him. Luke never flies into a rage and destroys Harlem’s Paradise (like he did with Burstein’s barn). Not only that, Luke Cage even admits that Cottonmouth has a lot of talent as a musician and laments that Cornell could have made something of himself. And even when Luke does admit to wanting to kill Cottonmouth (and he admits this to Misty) he never physically harms Cottonmouth in the same way he did Scarfe, despite Cottonmouth being–to quote Officer Scare–”A hell of a lot worse.”

When Luke Cage returns to Harlem after discovering Burstein’s hand in his transformation, when Mariah has turned most of the city against Luke, Cage still does not meet her with violence or brutal retribution in the same way he does with Burstein.

When Diamondback works to kill Luke Cage and everything he has, Luke still makes multiple attempts to reason with his old friend, and only resorts to fist fight at the end of series when absolutely necessary.

Luke Cage, as an ex convict, not only seeks redemption, but he actively extends it to others (specifically black people, and other people of color.) And not only that, he works to protect those who can’t protect themselves, bulletproof skin or not. Which every community he finds himself in, whether it is the prion community at Seagate, or the Black community in Harlem, Luke Cage looks after the little guy (prisoners and convicts included) and works to protect them from the people who wish to do them harm.

WE

you forgot a white person

he treats the lady's all the same

>black criminals
>redemption

Chose one

Nigger.

So he is a racist? Black people are all racists so I guess it's in character

He's about as racist as the cops are in real life with minorities. He's doing his job and the people he encounters are playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.

You don't play respectability poltiics with white people because alt-right whining aside they're already presumed respectable by the world. Moreover, white people have the presumption of individualism. When a white guy's bad, he's a bad guy. When a black guy is bad, all black guys are bad.
Now give me my (you)s.

According to actual statistics cops aren't more likely to kill a black person than a white person
Plus last I checked two wrongs don't make a Right

>You don't play respectability poltiics with white people

Nigger.

>two wrongs don't make a right
Says who?

>According to actual statistics
>actual statistics
lol

It seems like you are stuck 100 years in the past
When people see a well dressed black person or a black person with a job they aren't going to assume anything bad about them
When they see a black guy dressed like a thug while walking the streets at night we'll, that matches the profile of most muggers

Well if you go around targeting white people you don't have the right to complain when cops target black people because you are doing the same thing

there's statistical evidence that proves most blacks are bad though

>When people see a well dressed black person or a black person with a job they aren't going to assume anything bad about them
No, they just assume they've got a court date.

lol
its about poverty and class, not race.
Classism has always been a thing, since the first human who thought about creating a tribe system.Its in our genes

>statistics give me the right to look down on people

Why not user if a nigger is a nigger we should treat and beat him like one.

What the fuck even is respectability politics.

If it were as simple as putting on a suit don't you think the code would've been cracked after, I dunno, a century.

Just means you'll be right to do so most of the time.

>your personal experience is not representative of the bigger reality
>your bigger reality is not representative of my personal experience

The idea that if you don't listen to rap, pull up your pants, get a job, and racism will be over.
Which has merit but overlooks the fact that if a racist wants they can just go "but you did that stuff in the past" or "look at this other subhuman that shares your phenotype that lives 1000 miles away".

What makes you neogaffers think that you're welcome here? Get back the the shithole you crawled out from.

its not just about clothes, its about the way you speak, its about mannerisms, its about projecting that you have money and are educated.
Its something hard to fake

You don't give speeches to people that aren't going to listen. You save them for when they might be heard.

Basically black people who argue that it's black culture's fault that racism exists, and if you pull your damn pants up and stop all that rapping racism will be solved.

Because apparently it's on the people who are being oppressed to change, and not the oppressors.

As a blackanon The 2nd example you stated irks me alot because of how often I see it.

Again, you think that after hundreds of years that wouldn't have been figured out?
Not to mention if it were purely class then white trash wouldn't be elevated. But hey, anything but admit it might actually suck to be a nigger.

It really is the blacks fault though slavery would have never happened if the blacks never sold themselves to us the europeans would have just continued deus vulting the turks

It's just gays presenting man.
Not that it matters anyway. Problems existed before belts did.

yeah but there arent many people like that and the ones who really behave like that get called out beccause itss not acceptable
go treat your paranoia

>then white trash wouldn't be elevated
Wait, since when is white trash elevated? Hillbillies and rednecks have always been looked down on by everyone but themselves

But user, Luke Cage is a fictional character. Are you suggesting that cops have the right to target blacks because a comic hurts your feelings?

Poverty and class are bullshit excuses in the face of affirmative action. These people can get scholarships and free money and jobs simply for being black. If they're too fucking lazy to take advantage of that then that's no one's fault but their own. Not to mention that even blacks from well to do backgrounds still commit more crime than poor whites

>ACTUALLY, IT'S ABOUT INTEGRITY IN INTEGERS

>W.E.B. Du Bois noted this phenomenon in his book The Souls of Black Folk, and named it “Double consciousness” in which Black people are aware that we’re being watched and judged while in the presence of white people. There is an added pressure to act a certain way, that isn’t present with other Black people.

Thats normal for whenever you join a group where you look distinctly different from the rest. I got early balding, big scar on my cheek thanks to abusive parents, and crappy childhood, big black beard and I dress in black hoodies with metal band logos. Suffice to say a lot of old people and women are initially afraid of me on the streets.

Shit mang where's my quick job and free money?

>Again, you think that after hundreds of years that wouldn't have been figured out?
i figured it out, why didnt you?
plenty of people figured out, there have been revolutions over it where the poor kill the ruling class, hell look at marxism, wich is completely retarded, its about how the ruling class abuses the poor, its in the bible wich is the first book
rich and powerful people dont want you to know they are the problem.

>yeah but there arent many people like that and the ones who really behave like that get called out beccause itss not acceptable
Doesn't matter.
Only white people get to be abberations. Everyone else has to represent their entire group all day every day. One black person goes gets caught with a small amount of pot, all blacks are drug dealing criminals. A white hick's methlab blows up, he's just a bad seed. A muslim guy shoots up a park, all muslims are terrorists, A white guy goes on a killing spree at a country music concert? Isolated incident dunno why he did it.
And you try to lump them together into a monolith like everyone else has to be lumped together? They absolutely lose their shit. The replies to my post will prove that. White privilege exists and it's the ability to be judged as an individual.

>commit most crime out of all demographics

>Literal urban cancer that destroy any neighborhood they move into

>Have a loud and boisterous culture that most don't like

yes, clearly it's the fault of other people and blacks din du nuffer

>that proves most blacks are bad
Sauce? Because as far as I'm aware across all groups not even 1 percent of their population is violently criminal. Every year, murderer/victim numbers come out and it's like a few thousand people across all 50 states when each group has a population in the tens of millions at least.

I'd rather be a hillbilly than a nog

I'm curious why?

There's more kinds of white trash than rednecks and hillbillies.

Well you're less likely to be shot by other hillbillies

>Everyone else has to represent their entire group all day every day
for the handful of people who are still racist? sure
maybe you will meet one or two of them a year tho
also there are way more racist black people like white, asians and hispanics together dont have half as much racists as blacks do

Still be human that way

white trash in any definition I've known it is poor whites who have a culture typical of poverty.

Good job proving my point

>These people can get scholarships and free money and jobs simply for being black.

I love people who think affirmative action hires and scholarships mean that every single black person has their life handed to them on a silver platter. Like, every single one, down to a man.

It's like a real-life version of that South Park episode with Cartman and the jew gold.

>Because apparently it's on the people who are being oppressed to change, and not the oppressors.

Sadly this is always true throughout human history. Do you think the Roman's overcame Carthaginian trade oppression through whining about not being able to sell as many grapes? Do you think America overcame British oppression by whining about tea?

Nah, nigga: they overcame them through power and force. The only right that exists in the world is right of conquest. And while this is an incredibly cynical perspective; it is proven true time and again in history.

>But what about the Civil War or Gandhi?

Gandhi is a figure we look at to pretend there weren't a massive amount of Indian men and women fighting and dying against a (crumbling) British Empire, and it was those men and women who broke the back of the British not some skinny dude going for a walk. In the case of the Civil War slavery had become an obsolete form of managing a plot of land, especially when you consider that the Civil War was due to new states being created and there were more than enough poor free people in the East Coast who would gladly go west to work that land for nothing, but the South wanted to fill that with slave plantations which would have cost too much.

I'm not trying to say this without empathy (I'm a white dude myself), but unfortunately if you want shit you have to take it, and power only responds to and respects power.

Case in point, the piss poor counter. There's numerous scholarships that are only available to blacks. Blacks are more likely to be approved for FAFSA and more likely to get accepted into a school because of diversity clauses. Blacks are more likely to get a job, even if they're less qualified, also because of diversity clauses.

Yet here there are, whining about how it's because of poverty that they act like subhumans and that if they could only git mo money fo dem programs. Never mind that most black children don't even bother showing up to school and schools have to hire people to pick them up and force them to come on count day so the school can get money

I'm pretty sure there are more racist Asians than blacks

>When people see a well dressed black person or a black person with a job they aren't going to assume anything bad about them
There have been some reports recently about a different type of assumption, where rich black people are constantly assumed to either be sports starts or have dirty money by white people. Or a rich black family moves to the suburbs and when they're doing yard work people view them as "the Help."

Yes and the idea that white poverty is exclusive to the south isn't an accurate reflection of reality these days. It's centralized at best, but certainly note exclusive. What do you call white trash from new jersey? They're not rednecks or hillbillies.

Because I'd still be white and not an animal

blacks do commit the majrity of drug related crime
muslims do commit the majority of terrorism
and whites do commit most of rampage shootings
all 3 statements are right

"anecdotes and isolated incidents, they don't count"

>whites do commit most of rampage shootings
Whites do no crime you fucking liar any white accused of a crime is a jew

Gee, it sure is neogaf in here.

these kind of no sequitor im right and when you claim im wrong that just makes me double right commets are why nobody bothers listening to you

Not actually true. If you are black and from an affluent neighborhood, affirmative action doesn't actually kick in and you don't get shit. Also affirmative action really isn't all its cracked up to be, given that most schools or jobs will only save a few seats compared to the mass amounts of seats and aid they hold for people who or generally poor. I think most people here see that black people get accepted to places and forget that a lot of them come from poor areas. They're getting things like student loans and Pell grants because they're actually poor. You're probably wrong when you're assuming they're in on AA (especially since AA is a sheer numbers game most institutions play with the government for either deductions or increased budgets, and it makes no sense to flood themselves with AA hires or students when there's a cap on what they can get in return -- at worst they'd max out for what kickback they can receive and then stock up on general poor kids for those kickbacks, and old money kids to maximize legit tuition revenue, like they do now)

Lower mass shooting requirement to three people instead of four and watch black representation skyrocket

No, there isn't. That's a really retarded way to troll.

> implying that all blacks aren't murderers waiting to happen

I want Sup Forumsbler to leave

That's fine. I expected you to pull a "nope not listening".

yeah well, you get that blacks people do it for some reason, either money or revenge or wathever while white people just go fuck you im going to kill people i never met for no reason

And that's why OP.
White people get butthurt when you even hint they might have room for improvement.

The whites that do those crimes are false flags c'mon man you guys can't be that fucking dumb. Who do you think runs hollywood? Let me you guess you are gonna say whites right?

>implying
Out in West Virginia we used to have missing people left and right. People are probably getting shot and killed out here all the time. It's just easier to dispose of the bodies because hogs eat every part of a human body, so you can just dump the bodies off at your local farm. It doesn't help that the police are underfunded and the roads are designed like shit for an efficient response.

Ask president "I love the poorly educated!"

it's called Sup Forumsmblr for a reason

So which is it? It's not true but then you say it exists but it doesn't give ideal preferential treatment. The point is that it exists, blacks can get into schools and jobs easier, even if they're under qualified, simply because they're black and the original point was calling bullshit on the idiots who blame poverty. Poverty doesn't make you rob and steal and poverty won't hold you back from going to school and making something of yourself. Most black kids don't even show up to school

Whites are nearly perfect as human beings this is a fact we were Romans remember?

>It seems like you are stuck 100 years in the past
>White Nationalist mob marching on the town hall brandishing torches and pitchforks
Which of us is actually still stuck in the dark age?

The white nationalists apparently.

It's not true that poverty and class are bullshit excuses in the face of affirmative action. Obvious AA exists. It's not some golden key like everyone paints it out to be, though.

what does hollywood have to do with people shooting other people?

(((They))) encourage it.

Just white trash. Thing is, I don't think anyone looks at white trash and thinks they're better than anyone else.
Outside of straight up racists, most people tend to just look down on everyone beneath them. They don't make much distinctions unless it suits their purposes to make them

FBI statistics are retarded now?

It should be obvious user blacks and ((them)) are bedmates

sure they do but thats not ilegal

You mean, the MAJORITY of a group are seen as aberrations when an individual does something wrong, while when it is an individual from a MINORITY group, then that individual is representative of the entire group.

This applies to the lone druggie white man in an all black neighborhood where most people have never met a white person.

That is natural. We project what little we know into those big open spaces in our head. TV, movies, and whatever 10 seconds of life experience you have are all used to project into that space.

For instance, what do most people think of when they think of Australia? The great outback and the great reef, right? Whole lot more to Australia than that, but that's what most think about how it looks.

Look how people from outside the US think about the US. They think it is NYC-DC-Los Angelos-Vegas cause that's what they see on TV and in movies. Until they come here and see we got all the same things they got and more, they just don't understand.

It's the same thing with groups. What do you think of Mormons? I have met 4 Mormons, and to me, every Mormon in the world is just like them. Intellectually, I know that is false, but that's just how human brains work.

And it always suits the purposes of the ruling class to make that distinction.
>If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you
A fucking PRESIDENT said that. And nobody's bothered to prove him wrong yet.

>dressed like a thug
that implies that black men have to constantly be in suits and heading to a job to fit some sort of "okay he gets to live" criteria.
does that also mean casual dress is only for the white man?

that's the equality part that is still lacking, that there's a preconceived notion based on color and the only constant is that white gets a benefit of the doubt, everyone else has to fight for it.

Well, it's hard to when he's right.
This gone election is pretty much representative of that. You had the left looking down on pretty much everyone between the coasts and the right looking down on aliens and the left.

I have yet to see an FBI stat showing that the majority of a group is criminal.

>does that also mean casual dress is only for the white man?
That's absolutely what it means.
I can't wear my school colors because they're also gang colors.

>believing Lyndon b Jewson

kek

>Whole lot more to Australia than that
Yeah we also got Quokkas and Numbats. At least on the West side, which is also the best side.

Ha. Like it started the last election.
"Real American" rhetoric has been a thing since 2001.

>if you arbitrarily change the law, you can in turn cook the books to paint the picture you want to tell
You don't say?

WUZ

I said representative of that, knobjockey. I didn't say it was new.