Put away the pitchforks and torches. This isn’t a racist diatribe or a white supremacist sermon disguised as defence of source material.
Instead it’s political and social reality.
When the J.J. Abrams Superman reboot was announced not too long ago, speculation ran rampant that the actor replacing Henry Cavill would or should be black. Which of course prompted the inevitable backlash and screams of political correctness and accusations of cancel culture. Which in turn provoked accusations of bigotry, obsolete thinking and outright racism. And about thirteen minutes after the news broke, everyone was screaming and calling each other names through their keyboards because this is 2021 and we can’t have nice things.
But everyone on every side of the argument missed the point. Not having a black Superman isn’t racist because the reason we can’t have a black Superman is because America is.
Look at the Superman mythos. After escaping a doomed Krypton, baby Kal-El crash lands in Kansas, where he is adopted by the Kents, a salt of the Earth couple desperate to have a child of their own but never blessed naturally. After discovering their newfound son’s emerging powers and unlimited potential, they instil the virtues of honesty, compassion and hard work into him at an early age. These homespun values balance his omnipotent power, keeping the Man of Steel human and humble despite possessing the power of a god.
The ideology the Kent’s instilled in him is just as responsible for making Superman the world’s greatest super hero as his incredible powers are. Ideology that would see him embrace and fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way.
But he can only have the luxury of those values and that ideology because he was a white child raised by white parents. If he was black, his world would be totally different.
If you haven’t realized that black’s have a radically different experience living in America, then you haven’t been paying attention. The colour of an American’s skin often plays more of a role in determining the education, opportunities and social mobility available to them then their talent, intelligence or work ethic.
Imagine that Kal-El’s skin was black and he crash landed in Mississippi during Segregation. Do you honestly believe he grows up fighting for the American Way knowing first hand that the American Way only applies to people with white skin?
What if he landed in Los Angeles and the riots following the Rodney King debacle occurred during his formative years? Would a teenage Kal-El not seek to use the fantastic powers at his disposal to address the injustices he would both experience and witness based largely on skin colour?
Even if he still landed in Kansas and was raised by white parents, the level of acceptance he could expect would still be dictated by his skin colour. Even his adoptive parents would experience a level of stigma and discrimination because they adopted a black child.
While he could be safely insulated from America’s racial angst as a white child, there would simply be no way to shelter him from it if he was black. While not as bad as some other states, Kansas is hardly a haven of tolerance and equality now. Imagine what it was like twenty or thirty years ago and how impossible it would have been to raise a demigod to love the country that treated him as a second class citizen because of his skin colour.
This isn’t to say that a black Superman would be any less of a hero as a white one (that would be racist). Or that he couldn’t become the same icon of inspiration and courage. But the truth is a black Superman would never possess the same level of idealism or patriotism as a white one. He simply couldn’t if he was black.
Look at it another way; there is a significant number of Americans who would never accept a black super hero no matter how many times they saved the world. And there is no shortage of American politicians who would never support a hero who openly praised the teachings of Martin Luthor King or John Lewis.
FOX News, OAN and Newsmax would run smear campaigns against him 24/7.
The hero we have known as Superman for the past eighty plus years exists only because of the virtues and privileges his white skin affords him. How would his worldview have been shaped if he crash landed in Kansas as a black child in the 1920’s or 30’s (the first Superman comic was published in 1938, so he would have grown up during the roaring 20’s and the Great Depression). How would his value system have been sculpted during a time of American apartheid, before blacks were legally allowed to vote and were forced to attend different (and often inferior) schools and churches? Would he have decided to fight for the American Way if he grew up while cities and states erected statues of Confederate war heroes and slave owners to intimidate black citizens? None of this mentions the hate crimes black Americans faced on a daily basis.
Imagine a scenario where the Klu Klux Klan came to the Kent farm one Depression Era night, intent on burning it down to punish the Kents for adopting a black baby. Imagine them beating Johnathan Kent in front of a screaming Martha and a horrified Clark. Then imagine the white robed assailants, local law enforcement among them, bringing out a noose intended for a young, black Clark.
No matter how that scenario ended, Clark Kent would never trust any American law enforcement or political institution ever again. He may even aggressively, destructively distrust them. And why wouldn’t he? That’s an Elseworld story DC needs to tell.
(DC has had a few black Superman scattered across it’s Multiverse, but none of them ever sank their teeth into the United State’s social crisis).
And while you could simply move Clark’s childhood out of the Depression into the future, there is always a version of the above scenario waiting to happen. There is virtually no time in America’s history where a black child can be raised with an experience equal to a white one.
Not being able to have a black Superman is not a condemnation of American blacks. Instead it’s an indictment of America’s systemic and institutionalized racism. Thinking you could have a black Superman and nothing would be different is naive at the very least and dangerously ignorant at worst.
And it is part of the problem
Would Erik Lensher have become the champion of mutantkind and the threat to humanity known as Magneto if he hadn’t endured the horror of the Holocaust as a Jewish teenager? Magneto’s first hand experience with genocide and the unimaginable depths of human bigotry sculpted the iconic character he became.
A black Superman would be no different.
So instead of recasting Clark Kent/Superman with an actor of colour and pretend everything would be the same, why not tell the story of existing black character? One where the experiences and challenges of being black in America are part of their origin and motivation. Part of their narrative DNA.
Make a movie based on Milestone’s hero Icon. Or the Blue Marvel. Or J. Michael Stracynski’s interpretation of Nighthawk from the Squadron Supreme. Have Warner Bros. mend fences with Ray fisher to reprise Cyborg. Each could make a fantastic movie while not flinching from the reality of the Western world’s racial schism.
Maybe the time will come when this won’t be a conversation we have to have. But that day is not today and making Superman black without realizing how that wouldn’t be possible because of the society we live in doesn’t help anyone.
In fact, it could even be a step or three backwards.
Image www.screenrant.com
