Submitted by jamescookenotthatone t3_zsk6me in todayilearned
I knew that but always loved how Marvel made a parallel between mutants and minorities, both attacked for reasons they had no control on.
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You know, I saw an interview with Martin Luther King Jr. where he wasn't satisfied with what they had won. He saw it as the easy part because it was good for business to let everyone come in and shop equally. The hard part, in his mind, was the part that wasn't good for business. He was killed before any further progress was made. Some would argue very little, if any, progress has been made since his death. At least not the kind of progress he envisioned.
I know these two things are nowhere near equal in weight or importance, but thinking about that interview, and about Marvel arguing against its own message for tax reasons. I can't help but think social issues will always go the way that is ultimately good for business. Which is kind of sad.
I would argue it sends the message that our tax codes for toys are stupid. Why are action figures taxed differently?
It's actually more meta then you think. Plenty of groups want to be treated fairly but at the same time want to maintain advantages. Marvel was basically arguing that mutant toys need an advantage over human toys to be treated fairly. I know that was not the real reason but practically speaking it's not unlike people fighting for affirmative action policies to help based on race instead of other non race criteria. Pushing race based policies to help only some of the disenfranchised people instead of more general policies that would still help people belonging to races that are most disenfranchised. For instance, helping all poor people.
It's not unlike having programs to push girls into STEM jobs but not having similar programs for boys or even complimentary programs to help get them into careers predominantly filled by women (like teachers and nursing).
It's a very complex problem. Take the quota systems designed to help black and Hispanic students get into better colleges by reducing standards for them. Is it fair? No. Is it needed to help certain students? Debatable but certainly is effective in helping those students get access to better education.
Do you like your converse SLIPPERS? Cause shoes are taxed differently!
*very sad
I thought the best parallel was mutations and puberty. Teen bodies going through changes. I remember wondering what my mutant power was gonna be when I read X-Men comics at age 11.
I got a hairy ass as my mutant power.
Dr. McCoy, is that you?
Ah yes, "The Black Forest" as the guys in the locker room in high school would call it...
Good thing I like Black Forest cake
I got a robe
This. Anybody who feels different, like they don't fit in, who feels like a weirdo -- that's who X-Men is for. To imply that it's less for me because I don't belong to any marginalized groups of kinda heinous.
That's why it works so well for them to be teenagers.
I always thought this was funny. Like obviously we have humans being born thay can controls mind and kill a nornal person with a lift of a finger. Like I'm not gonna let someone walk around normal society with an M61 Vulcan auto cannon for an arm. Then again thinking that we need to separate and dominate different colored humans is as silly as people being born with the ability to control the weather.
Except... You're over-simplifying racism. It's not just you, however- people are ALWAYS over-simplifying racism by decrying "how can people hate others simply for the color of their skin???", so it's understandable how it gets repeated as if based in fact. I've lived my entire life in the supposedly-racist Southeastern U.S. and never ONCE in my life have I heard anyone say they disliked someone because their skin was a different color. Rather, skin color is often associated with different CULTURES, and it is the differences in CULTURE that people like or dislike, not the actual color of skin. The reason Europeans felt superior to Sub-Saharan blacks hundreds of years ago was not because the Africans' skins were brown, dark brown or black. It was because their culture was deemed "primitive" by European standards of that time. Unless and until people let go of the platitude that is "people hate simply because of the color of skin", we're NEVER going to get anywhere with the discussion of race relations.
On the other hand, real life minorities are no different from every other human, while mutants are inherently superior to regular, everyday humans. Seems kinda odd to use mutants as an allegory for minorities when taking this into consideration.
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The X-men were made by Jewish men, during the height of a very tumultuous civil rights movement that was going on in America at the time.
It was meant to be a very deliberate, and direct allegory to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X but it was explained in a way that kids could understand. Magneto was a Jew, and an actual survivor of the camps in Germany.
Magneto's back story wasn't established until way, way after Lee and Kirby left the book. He was mostly just an evil mutant with his group of evil mutants, and the X- men were the good mutants standing in his way. Roy Thomas has a little of the future paradigm in his collaboration with Neal Adams in issue 63, but it's more that Mags wanted to rule the world with evil mutants, not free all mutants from humans.
Claremont established his Jewish backstory in Uncanny X-men 150. Even in earlier appearances in Claremont's run (104, 113), Magneto is still just a super villain who is trying to beat the X-men and take over the world.
His group was even called "the brotherhood of evil mutants" lol
It really wasn't. The early issues were very generic. Not to say they were bad, but they were pretty straightforward. It wasn't until the relaunch that it gained depth.
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