When Chaka Cumberbach asks her readers to name some black female superheroes, she mentions that the nerdiest among us might forgo Storm and remember Bumblebee, Nubia, or Misty Knight. However, for anybody less comics-savvy, those names are probably unknown.
She also relates her own childhood as a black female nerd, and connects the issues. It's a fact that mass media doesn't adequately represent women of color. But what is the impact of this narrative, that your heroes don't look like you, on the people growing up listening to it?
True fact about me: When I was little, I thought Storm was the coolest of the X-men and I don't redact this at all today.
We’re given so few characters that I’ve always felt that if I wanted more, I had to be grateful for what I’d been given and put my money where my mouth is. But I’m not going to lie –- that strategy doesn’t seem to be working. I’m getting really tired of just accepting whatever scraps are thrown our way. I’m completely over struggling to find the silver lining in an obvious token black character while on the other end of the spectrum, people who have never had to think about finding racial representation in popular culture feel justified in raising hell over color blind casting in a sea of predominately diversity starved movies -– yeah, I’m looking at you, people who acted like Rue’s casting in the Hunger Games was a personal slight but interestingly enough seemed completely OK with the damn near catastrophic white washing in "Avatar: The Last Airbender."It's a fact that watching television reduces self esteem in children for every demographic except white males. And yet, the stereotype of a 'nerd' is a white male. Is it any wonder that many 'nerdy' or 'geeky' culture artifacts are media-based, then? Is it any mystery that these media-heavy cultures are exclusionary to women of color, when it's so difficult to like what you like without feeling awful about it, unless you're the dominant cultural demographic?
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