The sleaze-mongering leftist website Gawker may be dead, but its spirit lives on through its former sister websites, which despite ostensibly being about nonpartisan topics, are more often than not tinged with a particularly ridiculous brand of propaganda — and the latest example is a doozy.

At io9, which covers real-world science as well as sci-fi and fantasy movies, comics, TV, and literature, Charles Pulliam-Moore tackles a question it’s hard to believe ever occurred to anybody as a pressing issue: “Why Do So Many Black Superheroes Have Electricity Powers?”

You see, as a kid, playtime “stressed [him] out” because no matter which black hero he chose to pretend to be, “it was almost guaranteed that I’d be doing jazz hands to simulate zapping people with lightning,” and the lack of superpower diversity among African-American characters “still bothers me to this day.”

TRENDING: FBI Official Assigned To Trump-Russia Probe Admits Bombshell: There Was a 'Get Trump' Attitude

As examples, Pulliam-Moore lists Storm, Black Lightning, (Black Lightning’s daughter) Lightning, Black Vulcan, Juice, Static Shock, Volt, and Shango the Thunderer. However, right out of the gate he undermines his own premise by acknowledging that one of the characters is a descendant of the other, accounting for their similarity, and that one of the characters, Black Vulcan, was created for the express purpose of being a Black Lightning substitute on the cartoon Super Friends, because the show couldn’t legally use the original character.

It’s also more than a little absurd to see Storm, one of the most popular members of the X-Men and whose superpower of controlling weather extends far beyond just electricity, cited as an example of some lazy, stereotypical, potentially even racist trope. He admits that she’s largely transcended the trope and become “one of the most complicated and nuanced comic book characters created in the past 40 years”…without explaining why she’s still on his list, if that’s the case.

Regardless, all of this is a problem because…well, read for yourself:

Personally, the thing that’s always stuck with me about most black heroes with nature-based power sets is the very thin line writers and artists have to walk to make sure the character isn’t being depicted as a “savage.” The idea that black people are inherently closer to nature is one of the larger undertones to the problematic magical negro trope that many black characters are often hamstrung by. The Black Electricity Trope reads like a distant cousin to the Magical Negro, in that they’re both established formulations of a character whose most defining qualities are a preternatural understanding and command of natural force.

Show of hands: has anybody not obsessed with reading racial messages into everything ever gotten this impression from comic books or superhero shows? Anybody?

The reasons this is ridiculous are so obvious I almost feel silly bothering to point them out, but here goes. First, there are thousands upon thousands of superhero characters in American pop culture. When creators are struggling to come up with the next big thing, there’s bound to be plenty of repetition — how many white heroes fly? Or throw fire? Or freeze stuff?

Second, firing electricity from one’s hands is a recurring ability for one simple reason: it’s cool. And just ask anyone who’s walked out a Star Wars movie wishing they could do it if they ever got the impression it was any kind of “black thing.”

Third, like I alluded to above, once you factor out the simple, race-neutral explanations for two of the characters, Pulliam-Moore is left with…a whopping six heroes. Out of hundreds, according to Wikipedia’s list of black superheroes, which is nothing. And with the exception of Storm (who arguably doesn’t even belong on his list in the first place), none of his examples are as prominent in pop culture or popular among fans as Black Panther, Luke Cage, Falcon (who even became Captain America a couple years back), Blade, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Cyborg, Ultimate Spider-Man (Miles Morales), or Spawn.

(And that’s not even opening the can of worms that is the white characters Hollywood has turned black, like Nick Fury and the Human Torch!)

Ultimately, this story is just another example of how petty and useless modern liberalism has become. Instead of offering intelligent observations on real problems facing America, they obsess over imaginary slights, even in fictional entertainment.

Have fun with that, io9. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be off saving America.





