“Woke” Black Nerds Are The Worst

Onyx Contributor:  H.T. (@Awkblerd), Podcast:  Lansing Anti-Hero

As a black nerd who regularly converses with people like me, I have to say something that’s gotten me blocked, gotten me called a coon and most recently had motherfuckers saying I’m actually a white man posing as black on the internet.  And that is that black nerds have become insufferable people in all this newfound & so-called “wokeness”.  For one, as much as a lot of you complain about whitewashing of characters, your counter is utterly BS.  Instead of simply asking comic book companies to just add new characters of color or even to just take originally non-white characters and revamp them, a lot of you have decided that one of the best counters, if not the best counter to whitewashing and stagnation in comics is to just racebend anyone and everyone.  And this is where I leave all of you.

The problem with racebending heroes isn’t that I can’t stand to see good white folks become sullied with color, it’s that I would rather see brand NEW characters who are people of color take over the role and be new characters in the universes they’re in rather than just switching the race of a few characters.  To me, just taking a white character and making them some sort of minority while disregarding all past continuity of said character is lazy as I know all they’ll end up doing is just making essentially the same flipping character over but get away with it because, hey, we got our diversity right?  For those of you who don’t read comics as of right now, there’s an Afro-Latino boy who is Spider-Man, a Pakistani-American girl who’s Ms. Marvel, a teenage black girl who is Iron Man, an Asian teenager who’s the hulk and a black man is Captain America.  And that’s just Marvel.  DC since the 70s has had a black Green Lantern, which my generation grew up knowing as the Green Lantern from the Justice League cartoon.  And of course my personal favorite, Connor Hawke, the Blasian son of Green Arrow that took over as Green Arrow in his father’s absence.

So many of you will argue that you want diversity, but I see your fucking conversations.  The reality is that a lot of you are motivated by revenge and want to watch white nerds cry rather than to actually get new characters of color made or revamped, and even when we do get new characters of color, you still choose to focus on how white nerds are in their feelings about it rather than discuss what they could do that’s new with said character.  No, you would all rather sit around and talk about how Iron Man & Doctor Strange are assholes but you can’t wait for Black Panther, who really is a pompous ass who literally divorced his wife because some asshole who she sorta knows attacked his homeland and she had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Seriously, all you black nerds in all your wokeness are becoming more and more hard to work with or get along with, not because you won’t go along to get along, but because the demands you all have for motherfuckers to work with you is becoming increasingly esoteric and obtuse.  You want diversity, but you also want all the straight white male & female characters erased or reduced in role, but you also expect this to sell when frankly most comic readers are, yes, white people.  This idea that all of you have in your head that listening to minority readers means not caring about the majority of readers screams double standard in a way that frustrates me as frankly, it isn’t realistic.

We can have diversity and all of that, but you can’t seriously expect companies to give you every desire and demand you ask for.  Face it, we were NEVER getting an Asian Iron Fist.  I know you all say, “Well, it’s not racist if he’s more than just a martial artist”, but that’s why we give a shit about him!  And real talk, most of y’all when it came time to name Asian actors who could take the role, a lot of y’all were picking actors off sex appeal and stunt work.  Not actual actors.  Basically, a lot of you alls argument was basically, “He fight good and he look good.”  Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Also, we’re never gonna get a Miles Morales live action Spider-Man movie (without a previous Peter film) as either it was going to be written in an accessible manner that sells, but gets 12 dozen think pieces written about how it didn’t authentically capture the Afro-Latino experience, or ultimately Disney would be stuck in development hell because they hired your favorite “woke” screenwriter and were left rowing up shits creek because they basically wrote Miles’ movie in a way that might as well have Keenan Ivory Wayans walking by yelling “MESSAGE!” every once in a while.  Seriously, I don’t really like Miles as the first year he was introduced felt like retreaded ground.  I’m perfectly willing to give him a second chance now that he’s been brought into the main continuity of Marvel (Earth 616) but real talk, I knew a Miles movie was never gonna be made in a way that pleased you all when they had him start dating Spider-Gwen.

Yeah, Nighthawk was a good comic, but did you REALLY think a comic with such an unabashed and unflinching view on police brutality was gonna sell across the board in this day and age?  Yeah, it had a perfectly valid point, but at no point did I think there would be a huge amount of white readers that would learn that that’s what was going down and just go with it.  Not because I’m a coon, but because I live in the REAL FUCKING WORLD.

Really, all of you really do only talk amongst yourselves to where anyone who differs is immediately written off as a coon because they don’t buy into your ideals when the reality is that many of us have to learn to deal with people who, yes, might not have the most progressive ideals.  Really, people like me know we are among people who might not get it or are flat out bigoted.  But at no point do I think that just because I have to vote on something and that 2/3rd of the room doesn’t agree that the best course of action is to yell that anyone who doesn’t agree with me is a racist & is a piece of shit.  You TALK to whoever will listen, TO them.  But none of y’all believe in diplomacy, none of y’all believe in learning to negotiate, none of y’all are willing to just have fucking nuance anymore.  And really this is why no one takes us black nerds seriously, because so many of us, in all our wokeness would rather tell people that they’re racist than actually discuss shit.  And this is why black nerdom is becoming so insulary.  And this is a fucking problem on so many levels.

But what do I know?  I’m just a coon who loves white folks…fuck y’all.