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CHAPTER NINE good morning, mr. chipsIn a recent posting on Usenet, a fan explained why he was unwilling to try BLACK PANTHER, my comic book series published by Marvel Comics. The poster certainly meant no offense, and, despite impressions my rebuttal may foster, I took no offense from the poster's comment. But it was revelatory of the struggle many women, minorities, gays and other political and religious groups have against the unfounded bias of assumption. Of how fear of the unknown or unfamiliar colors perception, and how that perception in turn creates anxiety and expectation, and how that anxiety and expectation becomes a kind of virtual experience many accept as an actual experience, and this faux-experience then fills in the gaps in the unknown or unfamiliar, which in turn colors perception, and that perception in turn solidifies the expectation, confirming it as a matter of experience and fact, which then governs the choices of those "experiencing" it, creating a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy and self-reinforcing delusion. The general polarization of sexual, political and racial constituencies in this country, if not the world, are fueled by this curious, institutionalized system of self-delusion. Human beings are a summary of their own experiences. We hate mysteries and we are instant gratification junkies, looking to shade in all the answers on the SAT's, anxious to scratch off the window on the lottery tickets. Anxious to neatly categorize and file every human experience and becoming anxious when we cannot do so. Racism, to me, is a set of misaligned algorithms, such as my hypothesis above, where anxious and uninformed people, threatened by the unknown, snap through a similar set of turns of logic, arriving at the conclusion that some humans are less human than they are, and the lack of respect and dignity the racist affords these people is therefore somehow justifiable in the eyes of God. The liberal is, to my thinking, the most dangerous racist of all. The liberal is someone who has convinced himself he is an intellectual and above such things. The liberal denies the institutionalized nature of racism, that racism is genetically encoded into our social custom, and that we are all participants in the perpetuation of this diseased mentality. Blacks and other minorities are often the most racist of all. Palestinians, often portrayed as cruel terrorists and evil men, are in reality some of the kindest and most gentle people on the planet. But, if you've been kicked around long enough, even the gentlest soul grows cold and hard and develops their own set of algorithms that can often justify even the most unthinkable acts. I have a great many black friends who whine on and on about racism, while feeling justified in practicing it themselves. Hey, call it what you will, but racism is racism. It's evil, funky stuff and we should all work out ways to purge it from our society, rather than writing it onto the social experience of our children. Those gentle and peaceful Palestinians, with each successive generation, have the hate algorithm ever more deeply encoded into the binary.
And, before you start those eMails, I'm not pointing fingers at the Israelis. Well, not only at the Israelis. They have their own algorithms. They have their own protocols deeply embedded. They, too, are a gentle, peaceful people who have been kicked around. Perhaps so much so that, somehow, some Israelis feel justified in villainizing nearly anyone who is not them. Having suffered anti-Semitism for centuries, a certain defense mechanism, borne out of real experience, may allow some to feel justified in returning hate for hate. All of which is to say I was accused of having a chip on my shoulder, and that my chip— my obsession with racial injustice— informed much of my writing. Now, "accused" is perhaps too strong a term, it was more like, the poster's general impression was that I had a chip. Which, perhaps, is even more damaging than an outright statement of fact. The slippery slope of impression sets the house on fire while generously throwing open a bunch of emergency exits. But, the house is on fire, nonetheless. It does the same kind of damage as a statement of fact, while not requiring any real accountability. When did you stop beating your wife? It leaves me gasping for air and wondering what to say, when to say it, and if I really should. I started to just dismiss the post, but, on reflection, I took a stab at addressing the issue of this chip on my shoulder. I almost like what I posted, so I thought I'd archive it here:
[DISCLAIMER] Now, this is the hell of irreducible proportions that *I* live in that, to simply enter into discourse over this subject, my inquiry and defense can and will (by some) be interpreted as my angry-black-man "chip." [END DISCLAIMER]
I have to wonder if you're not reading race into my perceived "chip" because I'm an African American. For example if I were white, and wrote exactly the same stuff, you might perceive an "anti-super hero" chip, which, yes, I might have an easier time chopping this up with you. But, while I am black, and I am angry, I am not angry about being black or about things of that nature. Race is not the dominate issue of BLACK PANTHER, nor was it of STEEL, QUANTUM & WOODY, XERO, or anything else I've written. The fact is, the companies continually come to ME to write "black" characters and "black" books. Why? You have to ask the companies. I'm a guy trying to make a living and when they ring the dinner bell, I come a-runnin.' Ok, I turned down IMPULSE, but that had nothing to do with Bart's race. If I'm writing a book that features a black character, I'm not going to violate the reality that character lives in or invalidate experiences that character may have due to his ethnicity. You can't walk around in this skin, in this country, and not have experiences unique to a class, race, gender, sexual orientation or culture. If you read hostility in my work, it's hostility towards bad comics. There's a lot of mocking of bad and stupid things that we really should have moved beyond years ago. The audience reading comics is far more sophisticated than it was thirty years ago, but a great many comics pros still publish comics they think are hip or relevant, that are loaded with bad craft and silly things that deserve, nay, cry out to be mocked. Comics are really expensive, and I'm sure we can all agree there are a fair amount of really bad comics out there, with characters doing stupid things.
Placing my snarky attitude into a racial context may be a knee-jerk reaction, as everything I do, everything I say, everything I build in this life is taken in a racial context. I am offered black books three times as often as I'm offered books about white characters. I'd like to think that's as much due to my fearlessness in the racial arena (I'm not afraid to just stomp all over the fragile, PC'ed eggshell walking nervous handling of race in comics) as to my perceived "hip" contemporary style, as my familiarity with the urban black thing, as, gosh, my hope that I'm offered whatever I'm offered— black, white, or Martian Green— because somebody thinks I'm a good writer. Would I still have the same ratio of "black" projects to "white" projects if there were a reasonable balance of African American editors in this business? Race, which is not a paramount issue of me, is nonetheless the loudest resonance associated with my name, even for people who consider themselves liberal and beyond such things. I imply no bias in this; it's merely a simple observation of fact. There was once a PTB at one of the majors who talked to me slowly, with a thoughtful deliberation one might use with a child. This person was just being careful not to insult me or raise my ire. I met regularly with this person to lobby on behalf of my projects and my freelancers, as did _all_ of the editors fighting for limited resources and attention for their projects. But, when *I* did it, I was the angry black man, and got the incredibly insulting kid gloves treatment, like I was made of glass or something. That's a kind of racial sensitivity, a kind of over-compensation by people (of all ethnicities) who are confused by the whole racial question and fear being labeled as bigots or something. It seemed impossible for a great many people to accept me charging into their offices to fight for my guys and _not_ experience those events in a racial context. My arguing Freelancer B deserves a raise, therefore, is received in the context of ,"If I were white, you'd have given Freelancer B his damn money!"
I mean no offense and I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but the "chip" thing hurts. It has no real substance or context, like a milkshake. Like the word "stuff." It's this amorphous thing without walls or floors, design, form or cohesion. It's something I can't even step up to and rebut. It has no teeth, no piece of paper with words on it that can be objectively reviewed. This is the thing that makes life so very difficult for professionals in this business. It's the kind of empty bias that can't be thrown at whites, but sticks readily to women, minorities and gays. It breeds and breathes and lives in the halls and even in some of the offices in many companies in this biz. It replicates easily and is self-financing. This is the beast I've been trying to kill for almost a decade; this groundless, non-specific "thing" that lives in the halls. It's a shame, and those responsible for it (thankfully, nearly all gone, now) need to be ashamed. You are certainly entitled to your impression. And, I'm sure a great many people who've never read PANTHER, and who may never *read* PANTHER share your gut reaction to this book they've never read. There's nothing I can do about that. But, as a general rule, it's entirely unfair to judge someone without having a specific common frame of reference. It's unkind, it's unfair. I don't want to go to a Korn concert because my general impression is I won't be able to relate to Korn's music. I've never heard even one song by Korn, so how would I know that? Just general impression from the media and other sources. Is that fair to Korn? Probably not, but that's the way it is. The difference is, there's no implied insinuation that Korn has a chip on their shoulders about middle-aged black comic book writers. Dig the difference? Be well, sorry for the rant.
Priest's adventures in the comics trade continue in:
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I am not anti-super-hero, I am anti DUMB super-hero.
I am anti LAZY writers, I am anti-STUPID plot device (which is why the
upcoming BP Man-Ape arc, GORILLA WARFARE, should be a must-read). There's
plenty of snark (hostile, sarcastic barbs) written into the work, but the
hostility you may be picking up has nothing to do with race. It has to do
with dumb, bad comics and dumb, bad plots, and a certain acknowledgement
of the absurdity of it all— an effort to neither attack the comics fan
nor insult his or her intelligence.
This is my life. This is the 20-pound bag of crap
I've had to carry since grade school. This is me, now, doing the racial
sensitivity thing by going out of my way to seem chipper and harmless and
non-threatening, when such efforts are rarely required of anyone else.