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I can't believe people are still giving Blacktober shit even though it's been over for a few days now. I would say I'm surprised but honestly? I'm not. And it's so frustrating to see because it was just a fun event for black people to share their artwork. "Political movement?" /1
No, it wasn't. People just see minorities existing as "political." Ironically enough, the only people -really- dragging politics into Blacktober, were the people harassing the artists whose only crime was daring to have fun and see themselves in their favorite characters. /2
And "blackwashing" is NOT a thing. If you won't take that from actual black people, take that from me, a white person. I even used to think "blackwashing" was real too, but then I thought about it for a bit; was I offended by erasure, or was I being reactionary? /3
And sure enough, the answer was the latter. I was being a reactionary, I wasn't actually offended or hurt by this art, I just wanted to argue, and I wanted to appeal my old dumbass centrist buddies with my stance of "both are bad." Wanna know why it doesn't hurt me when I see /4
artists portray, for example, Belle from Beauty and the Beast (citing her because she's my favorite Disney princess AND the one who looks the most like me), as black? Because representation for people like me is EVERYWHERE. Belle being black isn't gonna suddenly change the /5
fact that the vast majority of the other princesses are still white. In fact, there's STILL literally only ONE black Disney princess, and she's a frog for the majority of the movie. Meanwhile, I had plenty of white princesses to look up to growing up, black girls had one, and /6
AGAIN, she's not even a human woman for the majority of the film. Belle may be my favorite, she may be the one that looks the most like me, but I still had OPTIONS among the princesses growing up. Little black girls only -recently- had ONE, while white girls of different /7
generations had SEVERAL. Oh, and of course, it's FANART. The original white Belle isn't going to suddenly disappear because a black artist drew her as a black woman and posted it on Twitter. But you know why "blackwashing" doesn't hurt me like whitewashing hurts black people? /8
Because whitewashing has a long, terrible history that "blackwashing" simply does not, and never will. There are REAL stories, REAL history, where black people--hell, PoC in general--WERE involved but are ignored in favor of the white people. A lot of history as we know it /10
has seen revision for the sake of making out the white guys to be the "heroes." Just look at how we're told from a young age how "cool" Christopher Columbus was, when he was actually racist, colonizing scum. Whitewashing goes MUCH deeper than just changing a character's skin /11
color. Now, I'm sure you're wondering "Okay, but what about the Japanese characters being made black?" Well, admittedly as a white person I cannot speak over PoC, and that includes Japanese people, but I will say, that Japanese is a nationality, not a race, which means a /12
Japanese character being "blackwashed" is... still Japanese. Furthermore, blasians exist. In fact, an artist I follow who was participating in the event, is Japanese and afro-Latino. Yet he still received harassment for....somehow "erasing" HIMSELF? And don't say "Oh, but /13
black people are RARE in Japan!" You know what else is rare? Being born with bright neon pink hair, purple eyes, and super powers, but I guess "muh realism" only matters when black people DARE to have fun and see themselves in their favorite characters. And finally, it's /14
worth noting that in Japan, Japanese people are the majority. A Japanese person from Japan does not have the same experiences that a Japanese-American would. So it's not like the very few crumbs of rep they have are being taken from them. It's still simply not the same. /15
...in fact, I recall having this conversation with one of the Japanese people that were harassing black artists in the tag, and I brought up how Japanese anime characters were whitewashed overseas for a long time. And I find it baffling, that this person defended it by /16
saying it was "just localization." So, white people taking Japanese characters and making them white Americans so that they can market them to white American audiences, meaning Japanese-American kids lost the rep they could've had, is fine, that's "just localization," but /17
black artists making fanart of anime characters where they're reimagined as black for fun? Nope, can't have that, no sirree. And hey, that's ANOTHER thing about whitewashing. PoC, especially BIPoC, aren't seen as "marketable." Creators of color have been shot down by /18
executives who tell them there's "no audience" for stories about PoC, and again, it's worse for BIPoC.
Anyway, I also found a good thread about this BY a Japanese person, which, lemme just find it and link it... /19
Anyway, I also found a good thread about this BY a Japanese person, which, lemme just find it and link it... /19
