fantastic-nonsense:

hellionkitty:

fantastic-nonsense: wait…why did someone think that racebending Helena Bertinelli was a good idea? Who approved that at editorial? they could have created a new character that was black to be Huntress II we could have gotten a cool new character and people would have still gotten their representation but instead they racebend an established character to make a character who’s ALREADY A MINORITY and whose ethnicity and background make her subject to prejudice and violence…black. racebending just contributes to erasure and tokenization just confirms my thoughts that not only when Americans think representation they think “more dark people” but they’re completely willing to overlook their characters’ established minority background to make them more visibly “not white.” You know what, I’m not even going to explain the stupidity of this post because I’ve done it so much already. So I’m going to make this short and sweet I’ve been following the Helena Bertinelli tag for two years and I’ve never seen you in it before so why the fuck do you care so much suddenly?

There are black Italians, there are white Italians, Asian Italians, THERE ARE SO MANY FUCKING DIFFERENT SHADES OF ITALIANS SO SHE IS STILL A ITALIAN

And that last paragraph oh my fucking God. I think that’s the most racist yet that I’ve seen about her. “They took a minority and who already faced prejudice and made her black”

This is my boyfriend’s sister. She’s darker complected than him.

People are constantly going up to her and speaking Spanish to her and just assuming that she’s Mexican, well she’s not. She’s half Italian and half Polish. And you know why people do that to her? Because here’s the truth about how ignorant white people view skin color:

if you’re black, you must be black, you can only be black, YOU ARE BLACK, YOU ARE NOT A PERSON, ALL I SEE IS YOUR BLACKNESS AND IT SCARES ME

If you’re tan, you must be Mexican, you can’t be Salvadorean or Argentinian, or Italian, or Filipino, or Turkish or anything, you must eat tamales and cook beans, don’t you dare speak spanish this is amurica

If you look darker than a mexican? you must be muslim, I don’t care if you’re actually Indian,if you’re not muslim at all go back to Iran already

If you look white? Oh excuse me I’m not just white My grandpa was ½ Irish and a quarter Portuguese and my grandpa’s great grandmother’s cousin was a park cherokee so I have native american in me and there’s no way I’m racist WELL GUESS WHAT YOU SOUND DUMB AND YOU’RE BEING RACIST and it makes me mad that i’ve had to post so many pictures of look at all these different italians, and other people, actual italians have had to do the same fucking thing, nobody should have to justify anything to any of you idiots posting your dumb racist comments in the tag.

Lord, you’re irritating and hostile.

Okay, in order: one, I’ve been a huge fan of comics since I was 13. I love Helena Bertinelli. I usually just don’t have much to say about her meta-wise. So I don’t post in the tag. I mainly post in other Batfamily tags. You can check my “Helena Bertinelli’,”Huntress”, and “bat ladies” tags on my blog if you want. It’s not like my love of the Bat family, the Birds of Prey, or of comics is anything new.

I care because I like Helena and I don’t appreciate her character and backstory being changed. I did the same thing with the “She’s not actually Bertinelli, she’s actually Wayne” crap back in 2012 and the ridiculous changes with Tim Drake too, so don’t even. Just because I don’t post in the tag doesn’t mean I don’t like her.

Yes, I’m aware that there are many shades of Italian, thanks. You completely missed the point of my post: Americans in general, when they think of representation, tend to think “more dark people,” as if you don’t count as representation if you’re light-skinned. We could have gotten a cool new character who was black or a dark-skinned Italian, and had representation for both light and dark-skinned Italians, but instead someone thinks it’s a good idea to erase an established character’s ethnicity for the sake of making them more visibly “not white.”

Yeah, Italians faced and still face prejudice in America. You can look it up, but I can give you the Wiki to start with. There were lynchings, employment and housing discrimination, criminal stereotyping, unfair and biased trials, and violence. They’ve been stereotyped as violent criminals and sociopaths for forever (this includes up to today).

So why try to racebend Helena, an already established character, to be black (or African-Italian, if they keep her roots)? If they wanted to do a racial stereotyping or racism/colorism subplot, they already have ample resources to work with. It’s pointless, except we know DC currently has a horrible track record with race in the New 52, and they’ve been heavily criticized for it. So what to they do? They don’t re-introduce our many non-white characters that we’ve loved and missed (Cassandra) or introduce new characters…no, they just racebend established characters and call it “representation.” That’s not representation, that’s erasure and tokenism.

Stop calling me racist because I’m upset they’re changing the race of a character for no good reason just so they can point and say, “Look! She’s dark! Representation!” as if she didn’t count already.