He turned a blind eye to what his parents were doing and forgave it– even justified it. Not to mention that sort of smug attitude he got when he said he didn’t identify as black.
He has a very subtle level of self-hatred, but it’s forgivable considering his up-bringing. People forget that you don’t have to be a monster (and not even a bad person) to be a little racist.
Was it really that smug or just smart-assed? And why is Walky pegged as racist for not choosing to identify as black like his sister does instead of as biracial/aracial (i.e. “generically beige”).
It’s something they have a clear difference of opinion on, but does that make Walky’s choice inherently bigoted for (a) not being the same as hers and (b) feeling superior about *his* choice as most people do to some extent about any difference of opinion?
It’s smart-assed, but there’s truth to jokes when it comes to Walky. He jokes about how he really feels to mask that stuff, so I’m more apt to believe there’s a genuine feeling of some superiority there.
He’s not racist for identifying as non-black. He has every right to that identity if it’s who he is. I have never ever said that in and of itself made him racist. It’s him feeling like he’s a little better than his sister for that identity that I have a problem with.
There *is* a sense of superiority that comes from his upbringing though– and even him pointing out the stuff about her hair is insensitive. He’s also quick to defend his parents and say “Hey you can’t be racist if you have an interracial marriage!” You have to wonder how much stuff as a kid he willfully blocked out because his special treatment meant he had to work less.
The problem here is that there’s a mix of factors going on in Walky’s head that are hard probably for even him to identify. He clearly does feel a bit superior to his sister, but it’s hard to say that that’s definitely because of racist motivations rather than years of favoritism being internalized along with Sal’s acting out for attention (including negative attention). I mean, it’s not really a stretch to feel better about yourself than a sibling who has committed felonies.
The problem is that tossing the word “racist” around is kind like lobbing grenades. Everyone has biases of some sort or another towards people different from them, but I’d be hesitant in tossing around a word for someone which most people equate with just a very specific form of “evil.”
Walky’s probably in more of a grey area with possibly some unconscious biases he isn’t aware of. It’s clear he’s not comfortable with the idea that his parents would harbor biases along those lines, so it’s doubtful he sees bias as a virtue. (That’s kind of where I draw the line on the issue; if you can justify your bias as “right” in your head, you’re probably over the line). It is odd though that he reads as someone who doesn’t even think about race (including no self-reflection on it) when he grew up in a situation where it was constantly in his face. Possibly some repression there.
… I really don’t know how to respond to this post.
Does calling it a personal bias really make it easier for you to accept? Did you not pay attention to the last few days of comics where Billie said racism isn’t always evil cartoon villainy?
Everything you described was internal racism.
Bias by very definition means you prefer one over another. Racism is the preference of one race over another. If Walky has an unconscious bias, how is that not internalized racism?…
I suppose I should say that I have a legal background, so intent matters to me for purposes of determining the “wrongness” of an act. Racism carries more intent than unconscious bias. That doesn’t mean that bias is okay, but calling someone racist generally sounds like you equate that person with open, conscious bigots.
And yes, there is a huge difference. Many people who are morally opposed to racism carry racial biases they aren’t aware of. Implicit association tests prove this. That doesn’t mean that these people are racists themselves — just that they have a flaw to be aware of and overcome. Given the level of discomfort that Walky has shown with the situation, I doubt he’s pro racial discrimination — just someone having to face some ugly truths he wasn’t prepared for.
I’m aware it’s a thing. There’s just no strong evidence that Walky feels it, much less embraces it to the point where he could be called a supremacist.
For the love of god, you are actually doing the thing Walky did in the comic which Billie rebuked for being stupid. You are literally trotting out his “card carrying members of the Klan” line.
There is racism other than stuff at supervillain levels. The only racists aren’t “supremacists.” The Racism Dial doesn’t only have 0 and 10 on it.
You do racist things. I do racist things. Walky does racist things. Billie does racist things. We aren’t supremacists.
Learn this. Please. Before you deplete the world of its supply of strawmen.
@Willis: Which of us where you responding to? I could see it either way.
After all, that’s pretty much what I’m trying to say too. Bias is a spectrum, and people are going way too far in using words too far down the scale to describe Walky. Kind of like how people talk about Joyce half the time.
As Willis has already indicated, everyone is a little bit racist, even if we don’t realize that we are. Avenue Q has a nifty song about the topic. It’s pretty good.
And Willis, for what it’s worth, I actually like this storyline, even if I was mistaken about the reasons for Sal’s parents treating her differently.
Well, it’s a catchy tune, but it’s not really great on this topic. The thesis is essentially “Everyone’s a little bit racist, so there’s no need really to examine your actions and change. Everything is forgiven!”
The Bastard’s two cents on this issue:
I think racism is something inherent in our culture at this point in time. It would be practically impossible to find someone who has no bias whatsoever; whether they know it or not. However, “racism,” for me, extends beyond the color of one’s skin. It includes beliefs, heritage, culture, and even way of life. Think about it: do you feel some sense of superiority over someone who’s morbidly obese?
Depends on how you evolve him. There are two ways More Adult Walky can evolve, and you get different results depending on which way you go. Mr. Walkerton is the result of More Adult Walky having Max Happiness and being put into the Daycare Center with a Dorothychu and having an egg. Adultish-Childish Walky happens if Walky reaches level 35.
More Adult Walky wants to learn how to phrase a serious issue as a joke. But More Adult Walky already knows 4 things to phrase as jokes. Forget a joke and learn Serious issue?
Is it weird that Walky has probably had the largest amount of emotional growth outta the entire cast in the entire, what, two weeks of time they’ve been in college?
“Um…knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Noah.”
“Noah who?”
“Noah good way to address the topic of racial factors in parental favoritism?”
“…Keep trying, Walky.”
I guess you sort of need it to do certain expressions. If he just had the black dot, it would look like his whole eye migrated toward the back of his face, not that he’s looking back.
Parents can be sexist towards their daughters. Parents can be racist towards their PoC children. No different. Being a parent doesn’t mean you can’t be racist.
Even so I don’t see how it got into a racial conflict, we haven’t seen enough of there parents to see anything like racism out of there characters or anything that could lead to that assumption.
We haven’t seen enough of sal and walky’s backstory to aculy say there parents are racist, oviously sal’s parents are a key role to her characters origen But I dont see how racism fits ther,favertism for there only son over there only daughter because they mainly wanted a boy than a girl maybe, ya that makes more since ( still fucked up)
But them being racest, I dont see how it could be racism beside sal saying, ” The only reason mom and dad love you more than me is because you less black than me!” And sal saying that out of nowhere is what led to all this.
A.)Sal’s Hair is a physical trait just as skin tone is and doesn’t really count on the grounds that a woman’s hair is harder to maintain there hair than males especially for black females. Being black our being a member of any race takes a lot more than being born into it or shareing a couple of physical traits, you haft to embrace your heritage and culture , and walky hasn’t done that, and walky openly admits that he doesn’t do that,but neither does sal, and to be honest some of the things in that tumbler post where to open out of context and not a 100% of good gathered troop of fact and infromation.
And B.) because of that, There is just as much evidence that it is a race issue as there is evidence as it has to do with there gender, the gender “theory” just makes more since.
The main evidence we have(until more in-comic examples are presented) that the Walkerton parents are somewhat racist is that Willis himself suggests it is, thus invoking the Word Of God trope.
The problem is, other than what Willis said, we don’t know anything that Walky doesn’t, and we have no reason to think that Walky knows anything we don’t. Which means that when Willis calls us “runamuck ignorance”, he’s saying the same thing about Walky.
Excellent Tumblr post! The only thing I disagree with is the part about that strip where Sal’s hair poofs out of her helmet. The post says that strip is all about her hair shame, but I saw it as much more about her sleeping-with-Jason shame, and only a little bit about her hair shame at that moment. But there are plenty of moments to illustrate the racist undertones without that strip anyway.
That’s probably true. I literally went through the Sal tag so I didn’t see much context at some points (not to mention I made that thing REALLY early), so that’s probably what happened.
Here’s the thing though. Sure Sal may identify and be more identified as “black”, but in my opinion, stereotypes can be either ignored because they are only aesthetic (her hair), or overcome because they are born from the environment (violence). As an Only child Asian in New York, perhaps growing up in a melting pot reduced my exposure to racism, only noticing the less subtle varieties. Its just that racism was the last thing that occured in my head, despite her obvious issues with her parents.
Maybe they were
1. Disappointed in her intellect compared to walky
2. Disappointed in her violence compared to walky
3. Disappointed that they didnt get the looks they wished she had (But I don’t think that’s why walky’s the favorite)
Anything but shes stupid/violent/ugly because we consider her blacker than our son. Then again, when asked for race, i check other and write human, so perhaps I’m just naive.
OKAY when it comes to black people and hair it’s almost never just hair, there have been books, discussions, giant analytical debates about our looks in general and how they affect our lives.
Her father going “Your hair looks better straight.” is not just an errant comment in our communities. It’s not that it looks better because of her head shape, it’s that it’s closer to ‘good’ hair. Already telling her her hair is ‘bad’ or wrong the way it grows out of her head.
Believe me, we can get complexes over our hair, its length, texture etc. It’s a whole thing. I recommend watching Chris Rocks Good Hair for an abridged version.
So strike one, strike two could any number of things, she could be louder, she could be flashier, any number of things that we face in our fight with ‘respectability’ politics.
Forgive my stupidness, but outside of the context of this strip, how am I to know whether a preference for straight over curly hair in another is aesthetically or racially motivated?
Not saying anything does or doesn’t exist, just saying I’m not subtle enough to know. Also I like straight hair, so I’m a bit concerened there.
In lots of communities there are certain traits, metaphors, topics, etc. that are so entangled with larger issues in that community that, if you are a part of that community, they can’t be brought up separate from their greater cultural context.
For instance, an artist on Deviant Art from a different country that does not have the race relation issues the U.S. has drew a picture of Obama (or was it an Obama supporter) as a gorilla. He had NO idea he was hitting a hot-button racist message in the U.S. (I forget what his metaphor was, but it really was innocent) and he was flabbergasted by the hate in the comments, especially since no one explained the faux pas to him until I did at about comment 500.
So even though he didn’t mean anything racist by “black man as gorilla,” it could not be read out of it’s larger cultural context. Just like if someone said to an Asian person, “Really? But I thought you’d be a natural at math!” or assumed an American Indian can hunt and track or when some creepy middle-aged men once told me that I would “make a good wife”.
Certain things are so steeped in the larger cultural context that they have so much more weight than the literal meaning of the words themselves. And Sal’s dad can’t even proclaim ignorance of the concept (Like the artist I mentioned above). He, as a black man in this country, is fully aware of what it means when he says a black woman’s hair looks better straight.
Different. I’m guessing you come from a race with lots of different hair possibilities. Consider that for many races there is basically one sort of hair. For African-Americans its curly, anything other than curly means work has been done to change it. The result is that hair has a very racial side to it.
Consider the expression “Gentlemen prefer blondes.” You probably didn’t notice that there is a racial dimension to it. Natural blonde hair isn’t possible for certain races, and even if it is it’s more likely to have come out of a bottle.
Thanks, both of you. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. It has always seemed to me that a thing should mean the same thing no matter who you say it to, (barring different languages) so I have difficulty with this kind of cultural subtext even when it isn’t about race, which has led to me putting my foot in it any number of times.
Doom, are you familiar with the Jungian Collective Unconsiousness? That sort of sounds like your belief that the a thing should mean the same thing no matter who you say it to.
Things definitely don’t work that way for pretty much anything. Heck, things aren’t even consistent for our own selves. Think about it, what we define as hot or cold is largely influenced by the temperature we most recently acclimated to. In the winter, a 60 degree day can feel balmy, amazing, and like t-shirt weather. In the summer, that same 60 degree day has people scrambling for their jackets. If we can’t have steady, constant meaning for things so basic as temperature perception, how can we have steady, constant meaning for anything so subjective as emotion, racial relations, familial relations, politics, religion, etc?
I think the difference may be (and i’m not an expert on the subject so someone feel free to correct me if i’m wrong) but the difference is ANYONE no matter what race can cut their hair short or grow it out long (excluding physical capabilities). My point is, hair length is not dependent on race.
However, i’m white, I identify as white, and my hair will never naturally grow like Sal’s. She is mixed, she might identify as black, and her hair is not naturally like mine. So no, its not the same as long hair/short hair, as natural hair texture is pretty much dependent on who your ancestors were, whereas hair length is dependent on whether or not they want their hair long or short.
Soozi, actually from my understanding (which is limited and imperfect) not all hair can be long. I have had black friends who have said that if they just let their hair grow out it doesn’t grow down, it either gets kinkier or grows out and up (I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics since they were just describing it and not showing it to me). So they can’t have long hair unless they straighten it. I don’t know what percentage of black people this applies to, if it’s only some or if it’s all. Sorry, I’m not better informed. I think I was told this is also the case with some people with Jewish heritage, but I’m not certain.
I’ve been told this two, Jen, by my girlfriend who is mixed (1/4 Chinese, 1/4 Indian, 1/2 black). Her hair gets to a certain length and then just breaks.
Soozi: yes & no: a genetic basis can’t be used to separate things. On the one hand, hair length may lack a genetic basis, but the choice to cut your hair long or short CAN be ‘just’ aesthetics, BUT it can also be inextricably intertwined with issues of group identity, including politics. On the other hand, hair texture, color, etc., may have a genetic basis BUT we can choose to change those and those choices, too, might be ‘just’ aesthetic BUT in some social contexts they are totally intertwined with group identity and politics.
Exactly, in the black community it’s not until recently (I say recently but really early 90’s) where short hair was a thing, my family still kind of gawkps that I willingly cut my locs off around my shoulders instead of letting them grow long down to my butt. Because long straight hair is still more “desirable” as far as they’re concerned.
Or a better example, my cousin was letting her hair grow long, and she had it straightened. We went to beauty shop and they cut her ends because they were damaged. She cried. She cried long and hard because as far as she was concerned length was what mattered.
Please. It’s been repeatedly made clear by Willis and lots of commenters that everything about this situation is a real thing that actually happens, and that Sal is right. If it feels unrealistic, it’s because reality often does. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s because humans rarely do.
About the only thing Willis could do to spell this out clearer would be to sign a declaration in his own blood. Don’t make him do that. He needs that blood for his weekly deals with the devil, allowing him to keep up his unholy workflow and buffer size.
I keep saying that violence is probably motivated by the fact that her parents treated her badly. It’s classic misunderstood kid behavior to act up if they don’t get enough positive attention from their parents.
Walky isn’t really an overachiever so you could just as easily argue that they’d be disappointed in him for not being all that he could be if it were really about those traits at face value.
Also, the only reason why they’d be disappointed in her looks is if they associated the “black look” with a reason to be disappointed over. Sooo…
There’s a good bit of evidence suggesting there’s a motivator behind it all.
Some people won’t be satisfied ’til Sal’s parents had her a card stamped: “We hope this Racial Discrimination Experience reached you in satisfactory condition. If you should have any queries, please call 555-GRANDAD”
As I’ve said before, sometimes the huge stigma against racism actually works against us, oddly enough. Because it’s a big deal people need an overwhelming amount of evidence for the smaller (but still harmful), more subtle cases.
So then it becomes “how DARE you accuse me of racism over THIS,” and becomes a huge distraction from the actual problem.
…not that I’d change much of the stigma. I’d just like it to be more about the act instead of the perpetrator sometimes. But the media loves a circus…
In this case, they could be racist based on their attitudes.
Sal is angry, mean, quick to act on impulse, steals, lies and does what ever she wants. “Black” things.
Walky is calm, a bit nerdy, watches cartoons all day, is honest and behaves nicely. “White” things.
It comes of as favoritism mostly, but because of their big difference in behavior, it can also go to racism.
Then again Sal is the victim. The victim can think whatever they want. It could just be favoritism, but Sal thinks that its racism. And that is all that matters.
Regardless of race, none of the “black” things you listed are things that any parent should find acceptable. If there is a problem with people generally associating bad things with a certain race, that’s pretty irrelevant in the situation of Sal, who *actually did those bad things*.
We don’t know, do we, which came first? Was Sal stigmatized “black” because she behaved badly or vice verse? Was she even “bad” at first or just a rambunctious kid who tried a mother who was primed to see her as “bad” and blame that perception on “black”? We know that at 13 she was full of rage and committed a violent felony, but we don’t know exactly how she got there.
Everyone has been a victim of some unhappiness or another, and how they choose to respond to unhappiness matters too.
Sal felt her parents’ actions, and she probably didn’t instantly think of it as racism (or favouritism for that matter). But after many similar experiences, Sal discerned a pattern which was something akin to “I get treated differently for how I am.” Sal can change her hairs, but personality is a different beast entirely.
But to then go and say that all that matters now is that she feels like her parents treat her worse than her brother is, frankly, absurd. She feels downtrodden, she acts with fatalistic abandon. Both of these matter, not just to her, but to the people she interacts with.
Although she doesn’t act with fatalistic abandon. She rides a motorcycle, but that’s relatively mild, especially since she wears full leathers and helmet. It’s true she chain smokes, a crime against humanity (but slightly more white than black). She’s got some attitude, but hardly that extreme. She busted her hump in that math class trying to learn the stuff (before she turned to humping & her bust to try to get a grade). And she dressed up in her good girl costume and behaved ever so nicely during family weekend, only to be ignored by her mother, be told by her father ever so lovingly that she’s genetically defective, and got stupid Walkiness from her bro.
You’re right, of course, “abandon” is rather hyperbolic wording. It really only applies to knocking over a convenience store. But, as you are apt to point out, Sal takes actions that are risky. So I’ll stick to “fatalistic” to describe her general demeanour. She does have a part of her that tells her to wear a proper safety gear, to work for grades, to play a role for her parents, etc. She’s not daft, but she is wont to frustration, because she sees how much she has to work to be “good” for so little return.
I agree that she is readily frustrated. And I can agree that she hasn’t been very effective in her efforts. But I reject “fatalistic”, which I understand to mean giving up. Sal hasn’t given up.
I believe you may be thinking of “defeatism.” Fatalism is the mindset that “what I do can’t change what is inevitably going to happen anyway, so I might as well do whatever I want.” Defeatism, on the other hand, is “what I do can’t change what is inevitably going to happen anyway, so I might as not try to change anything.” Just for good measure, Stoicism is “what I do can’t change what is inevitably going to happen anyway, so why worry about it?”
I accept your distinctions, they’re important ones. Though I’ve learned “fatalism” meaning more like what you understand by “defeatism” — feeling trapped, unable to change the situation OR cope with it productively. In that sense “fatalism” can lead even to suicide as the only way out of an unbearable but unchangeable situation.
The anger, and the theft occurred AFTER the problem already started. Anger is an emotional reaction to something, it doesn’t occur for no reason and when she was literally starved for attention, it was of course going to just build up inside and force her to take attention-seeking actions (the robberies). Any attention is better than no attention at all to someone starved of it.
I still don’t entirely get it either, but I’m going to take a shot before ye incur the wrath of Willis.
Essentially, various traits and behavior are associated with, in this case ‘blackness’ or whatever. Sal’s curly hair being the one noted in the comic. In one tumblr comment Willis reposted, suggested that being rebellious was associated with Sal’s being black.
So the traits (beyond just the level of melanin) associated with race have value judgements involved. Sal’s and Walky’s parents prefer straight hair. To also dive back into the rebelliousness thing, I would assume as a rule that would be looked upon poorly.
So while they may not have explicitly judged Sal lesser for these traits associated with race, Sal still feels the effect. Also, by no means are parents free from any ‘isms’ related to their own children.
I may have botched the understanding or explanation somewhere, but I’m still learning too.
Ahhhhh as a biracial person, I can tell you that racism exists in the home. My mom is white, my dad was native american. My skin is light, so my mom tells me that I’m white whenever I bring up the fact that I’m native. Every. Damn. Time. My aunt is hispanic. My grandmother rationalizes this by saying “Mexicans are white.” Her words exactly. I am so upset that people don’t understand racism in the home.
Oh gods I get the same thing at home. I was born in Chile and was adopted soon after birth by a 100% white man and a 100% latin woman. I self-identify as latin cause hey, that’s where I was born and cause of mum my first language was Spanish. But every time I say I am latin, not white, mum is like YOU’RE A WHITE AMERICAN. And I’m like… yeah I’m a US citizen but I was born in Chile so I’m latin, and dad is like “latins are white too” ^O__o^;;
As an aside, when I went to Guatemala (my families country of origin) the first time, my grandmother let me know that being called black or white really was not an issue in some latin american countries. They did not associate the hue of a person with something to be racist about, which was a big change from the US. It was not something to be worried about. Everyone in the family was a slightly different color and I was actually darker than most. However, being called a native of the country, she said, was something that could get you in trouble as they had been treated as second class citizens and were considered to be of lower class origins. I thought that was awful, but they both were depending on the cultural context.
I’m black but I’m light skinned. On both sides of my family, someone (at least once) has fucked a white person. My great-great-grandmother was half Native American and half white before marrying my great-great-grandfather who was black.
When I was a child I went to a summer day camp and we went swimming. I got darker over the summer and my grandmother complained how the day camp “Ruined” my “Good” skin. She is a hell of a lot lighter than me.
I remember an aunt telling me that straightening my hair will make white people like me because my hair will be straight like theirs. A lot of my family members think that light skinned = good and darker skinned = bad.
Since I was light skinned I got a lot of praises and words of endearment while my darker skinned cousins didn’t get it so much. Here was the defining moment: One of my favorite cousins passed away in May 2005, my and my other cousin’s (who is darker than me) graduating year. While a lot of people were at my aunt’s house a day before the funeral.
My grandmothers tells my various aunts, uncles, and older cousins that I would be graduating next month. My cousin chimed in that she would be graduating too. My various aunts, uncles, and older cousins (most of whom I’ve never met before until that day) gave me a lot of money. A lot more than my cousin.
My cousin was pissed at me and said that “You only got that money because you’re lighter and they think you’ll do a lot more than your life than me.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I still don’t know.
I know we’re going back to racist supervillains here, but do people honestly not know that white slaveowners used to get black women pregnant and their kids would also be slaves?
I s’pose this is probably my last chance to say it: I had doubts about Sal’s theory for a while, for two reasons: (1) Willis loves a twist, even if it means swerving from the real-world theme we thought we were dealing with (see: Jocelyn Brown and the two shifts in Shortpacked Malaya’s apparent sexuality), and (2) the previous incarnation of Sal was a voice of bleak pessimism, often wildly wrong about life, who was particularly good at inventing reasons to keep her loved ones at arm’s length. But at this point, the evidence is really piling up.
This turned into a nicely affectionate scene between Walky and Billie, too.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and posit that T meant we were being set up for the real-world theme “Joyce’s brother is gay,” and we got Jocelyn instead.
That is exactly right, yes. We thought we were getting one real-world theme, and instead got another. It wasn’t impossible for the same sort of thing to happen here when the issue was first raised, but even if I didn’t follow David’s Tumblr it’d be looking pretty unlikely by now.
In that case, I take the “fuck you” back. My apologies. Kinda riled up with all the people denying racism can exist in interracial marriages, between parent and child, etc etc.
I can’t go into details, but not long ago I had to edit a draft which seemed to assume neither gay NOR trans* people existed. The writer was slow to see the issue, and I had to kick up some dust before we got it resolved.
It’s easy to start reacting too quickly if you deal with too much of that. I tend to protect my psyche these days.
I doubted it too, actually. And It was mostly on the grounds that I have seen very few scenes with how Sal’s parents treat her and all I have to go on is that her dad liked her hair better the other way. Which could mean LOTS AND LOTS of stuff. But I guess in this case it meant Racism.
Well, in the other universe, they weren’t raised in the same home either. IIRC Sal’s issues were partly based on how her adoptive parents treated her, though I don’t think it was about race. It’s fuzzy at this point since I haven’t read through it in a while.
Hm…I still want to know more about sals back story in this universe, Because thats is obviously the key to her character, I humbly beg for a flash back of what sal was doing before The robbed that store, it all has something to do with her parents
I still don’t understand this idea that Walky is “whiter” than Sal. What does that mean? They appear to have quite similar skin tones, I don’t know what Sal was referring to when she said this. I’m hoping for some flashbacks to clarify what their parents actually did or said to give her this idea.
Are you…for real? This has been discussed at length. Willis posted links days ago! Race is not all about skin tone. I’m honestly bamboozled that people are still playing the “same skin tone” card here.
In defense of “explaining the problem”: I attended an intensive workshop in college where we talked productively (with a trained moderator) about racism/homophobia/ableism etc etc and it was really helpful for me and a lot of other people. It was an excruciatingly painful eye opening experience and it changed who I am as a person for the better. I was never resistant to learn, I just hadn’t been exposed to enough people who were different from me. People who don’t want to see oppression will have a very easy time of turning a blind eye though.
I’m sorry that you found my question offensive, that wasn’t my intention. I didn’t see any links, I don’t generally dwell bellow panel all too often, or look for sources outside of a comic itself to explain things that are happening in it. But, after reading the link Kladeos posted, I’m still not really satisfied. Maybe curly hair is associated with black people more, but it isn’t a trait exclusive to black people. And, in the case of her father who has curly hair, his preference for her hair to be straight could be just that, a preference. Or it could be self loathing or related to being picked on for his hair as a child. With so little information, even offhand, about their parents, in this universe, I’m having a hard time being sold on this. It also suggests that Walky being a better student than her reenforces him as “white” and Sal being a bad student reenforces her as “black” but, too me, it seems a strange thing to say because smart kids are usually favored over their less smart siblings anyway.
David, can I call you David? You mind if I ask why most of those links are just posts of people defending you’re current arc? Obviously there’s more information out there about this subject, I mean it’s the internet for goodness sake. Fair question, don’t meant any hostilities or anything.
Presumably because that’s what his inbox/tags are full of, and because those posts are directly responding to this storyline and often to the comments already on the site, so they are particularly relevant to the current discussion.
It’s not the one he was trying to make but- What is your preferred address? It’s kinda commonplace in the comments to just refer to you as Willis, but I’ve actually always thought it was a bit brusque to refer to someone exclusively by their last name.
“Because I’m not going to post a bunch of links to “racism isn’t real!”” – they didn’t ask for links to ‘the other side’, they asked for links that support _your_ side but aren’t directly talking about your comic.
It’s irrelevant. If the claim is “mixed-race families can’t possibly be racist,” then it doesn’t matter how much the hell the examples talk about my strip. If there’s just one damn example of mixed-race family racism, then the claim fails. I’m not somebody’s monkey chasing after their moving goalposts.
Look, I’m not denying that these things exist. It’s just everyone on here seems convinced that Walkys parents are racists now and we haven’t really even met them. Obviously you know, but, to me, I hear Sal, who often seems supernaturally predisposed to the irrational when it works in her favor, making unsubstantiated claims and I doubt it. Especially when, the only time I saw her with her parents, they seemed disappointed that she was going to hair appointment instead of spending the day with them.
My thought is…IT COULD BE ANYTHING. It could be Sal being wrong. They could be ignoring her for other reasons. I t COULD be anything. But word of god kinda has told us that Sal is right so that’s the truth.
1. When did Sal behave irrationally or make unfounded claims in Dumbing of Age?
2. When she ditched her parents, her mother was still ignoring her, and her father made zero attempt to dissuade her or walk/drive her over and doing anything to extend his time with her. Fuck that, they didn’t visit her damn daughter on move-in day or this day. They came for Walky. Sal had to go to them.
She tries to sleep her way to a good grade with a TA. That doesn’t seem the most rational of decisions. Though, maybe she secretly just had an insatiable desire to sleep with Jason, which I’d contend is very irrational on the basis that he’s Jason. She ignores teachers, her RA, doesn’t study, generally bad decisions in my view. Love her though, don’t get me wrong.
You don’t know she doesn’t study. Joyce told her to get hep from her TA, so she did. They sat through a very frustrating tutoring session (I get the impression that teaching isn’t Jason’s strong suit), and when that didn’t go anywhere, they slept together. I think Sal got the impression he was offering sex for grades because he started taking off his bow tie, but I could be wrong. Key point: she went to him for help, it just didn’t work.
Why shouldn’t she ignore Ruth? Ruth was behaving very poorly to her and Billie. Not at all like a responsible RA.
And we’ve yet to see her interact with teachers. You can’t say she ignores them. The only teacher we’ve really seen is Leslie and Sal isn’t in her class.
So basically you’re projecting or misremembering all these facts about her.
Not true, we’ve also seen Alex, the teacher for the into to computers class. Danny and Amber are the only named characters in that class, so your main argument still stands.
Why is it that for you to take a person’s point as honest, they need to be 100% rational? A character can be irrational and still make very good points. Often times their issues are just put off as irrational, which contributes to more irrationality, etc. etc.
Now, in terms of setting a character up, it can be difficult if you write “this is comic relief character AND FOR ONE SCENE TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY” but that isn’t what happened. We’ve seen Sal behave in different ways multiple times. Like with the roommate agreement where she was clearly the rational one, and Billie was just a bit irrational.
Sal has been irrational, but that has never been her defining character trait. She is multi-faceted. And part of that facet is having issues with her parents. And just cause she’s the one complaining about it, doesn’t mean she’s wrong.
But you have a point, her parents don’t seem to be involving themselves in her life. I got the impression that her dad cared but maybe was just trying to allow her independence, but her mom does seem coldheartedly uninterested.
Even with her parents being racist( and I still don’t know what kind of racist at this point), her actions are still hers alone right? I mean, her parents didn’t shove a knife into her hands and tell her “Go rob a convenience store, also don’t forget Walky’s Nachito’s”, she chose to go and do that. Honestly I think the whole family just needs therapy, big time.
Why is everyone ignoring the very specific detail that Sal says it ISN’T about the robbery, the preferential treatment has been happening SINCE THEY WERE BORN.
Because she robbed a gosh darned store. Even when the parents were acting the way they were since the kids were born, Sal robbing a store with a freakin’ knife didn’t help things. You don’t think I’m tired of people ignoring the racism that’s present? Honestly when this whole thing started I just thought it would play out like the typical “Parents favor the son” routine, but it didn’t and that’s cool cause now we get to see all of this unravel before our eyes, but you can’t just ignore the fact that Sal robbed a dang ol’ store.
1. Sal dresses up all prim and proper
2. Parents act cold to Sal, who is behaving unlike herself to impress them
3. Sal ducks out, and despite minimal interactions/neglect, says that visit was relatively painless
4. Sal gets hair straightened (after dad makes hair comment), then looks sad
5. Walky sees her in her outfit, and mocks her
6. Sal accuses him of always having an easier time than her
7. Walky pulls “I’m not a criminal” card
8. Sal explodes and says this all started at their birth, because he was born whiter
So yeah, this isn’t about the robbery. The whole set up was to let us know that the robbery was a red herring, if you will, because there are problems ignoring that.
1. At some point Sal and Walky’s parents start showing favoritism towards Walky since he’s “Whiter” than Sal.
2.This continues on for a while, making Sal depressed and/or angry.
3. She robs a store
4. Boot camp? Can’t remember but it was something similar if I recall.
5. Sal arrives at College, one of the first things we notice is that she dislikes her natural locks because they cause her problems when she wears her bike helmet.
6. Sleeps with a teacher because of mixed signals. Or no signals, whatever.
7. Parents days. Sal decides to have her hair go back to naturally curly, wears a dress, and tries to act like a good well behaved child, which is odd since her parents are supposed to dislike her for having, racial wise, non-white hair.
8. Father comments on her hair, like all dads do when they can’t think of anything to say, mom is ignoring her daughter.
9. Walky puts his foot in his mouth and pokes the Tiger after Sal gets her hair back to how she normally has it.
10. Big argument, they don’t speak to each other.
Robbery has a place, it’s not the main reason, but you can’t just ignore it.
Tommy, Sal didn’t “decide to have her hair go back to naturally curly”. It went back without her wanting it to do so. If I recall correctly, it had to do with stress.
Ya its not just the skin, being black is a culture, and sal is way more into the black community than walky, even though sal hasn’t once hanged out with a nother African-American, and the fact she has a daliss accent and adopted the personality of a white biker girl wait a minute…who did sal say who was whiter than who now?
Wow really? So southern accents are a white thing only? I’m afraid you need to take a trip to the south yourself and meet some black people living down there.
Walky is an interesting character as he’s full of so many nice things and good will, but then says stuff like “invisible sky wizard” and insults not only Joyce in a painful manner but everyone who shares even part of her beliefs. He’s got a lot of anger in him and disdain that I wonder, really, might come from a dark side to his parents.
I don’t know that’s it’s anger and/or disdain. He’s always seem to have a severe lack of tact when it comes to expressing his true feelings. He seems to find Joyce and her beliefs more annoying than anything, but I don’t think he’s trying to hurt her.
Regarding religious beliefs with disdain dos not mean that you have anger issues. It could be that he just thinks the belief is silly, and he is a person for whom “tact” is completely foreign.
I have to admit, its terrifying having my pathetic bubble of disbelief of racism in interracial couples popped, sending me spiraling down to my glass floor of denial( which I broke) before hitting the cold hard ground of the world(which surprisingly also pulls away, as “the world” is a subjective perception, into a colder spike pit of reality.) People never cease to amaze me.
On the other hand I actually believe that their parents are not necessarily racially intolerant bastards. There was a study where they went to black majority preschools and presented young black girls with Barbie dolls, black and white, and asked them which ones were prettier or “better”. The majority of the time they picked the white Barbie, not because they were racist( completely possible to be intolerant of your own race), but because a sort of brainwashing occurred. Society almost idolizes the image of a young, thin, white woman as the symbol of beauty. Thus the sort of self loathing over image in black communities as black woman tried to look more like white woman by straightening their hair and such. It’s possible that walky and sal’s dad suffers from a similar sort of brainwashing while their mom is acting on learned behavior as her social learning center attempts to make sense of the situation before discerning its safer to act the same way. This is all done subconsciously as we’ve seen her to be FAR too much of a ” visionary” to fall into a pitfall like that of her own volition.
What you’re describing is internalized racism, and a lot of PoC have it. Takes effort to learn that it’s okay to embrace your heritage. Part of why it’s so angering when white people appropriate our cultures.
Um, Carlos, hate to burst your bubble more, but how is young black girls believing whiter is better NOT racist?
One of my friend’s nieces (half black; father left; she lived with her white, overweight mother – this is relevant) loved Disney movies but, as they owned a really crappy TV, she could not see the movies, she could only hear them. She loved dolls and characters that looked like her and her mom and thought her mom was beautiful. Also, when she would draw pics of the Disney princesses, her imagination always painted them to look like her.
After a few years (the girl was about to start kindergarten) mom saved up and bought a good TV. Now she could finally see the Disney princesses. Suddenly, she wanted to be whiter, didn’t like her curly hair, wanted white dolls and asked her mom one day in a heartbroken voice, “Mom, are you not pretty?” To which her mom replied, “No, honey, a lot of people don’t think so.” So she learned really quickly that white and thin were pretty and since she didn’t have one and her mom didn’t have the other, neither were beautiful and therefore not “worthy” of the things the princesses accomplished or were given.
I don’t know for sure what you mean by “racially intolerant bastards”, but that’s not the same as “racist” – as Kladeos points out. Her dad seemed glad to see her and affectionate (vs mom), but look at what he told her — ouch.
Fogel, could you elaborate on how “racially intolerant bastard” and “racist” differ? I’m sorry, I think I missed something, they seem fundamentally the same to me.
I think his point is mostly about the fact that racism can be a sliding scale from relatively well-meaning internalized prejudices (like, believing that all people should be treated equally, but having some of the aforementioned preconceptions about beauty) to extreme racial prejudice, while being an “intolerant bastard” pretty much means they “don’t take kindly to you people around here”.
I think that Walky and Sal are dealing with the same damage caused by their parents racism. Sal was treated as bad/black by her entire family, and Walky was treated as good/white by their parents. Sal was isolated from family, friends, and her own home for FIVE years. Walky seems to have retreated from friends and family for the same five years(the cartoon comment is quite telling).
My list for worst parent in no particular order:
Blaine
Linda Walkerton
The Billingsworths
Ethan’s Mother
They have all permanently scarred their children.
People are flawed. Parents are people. Therefore, parents are flawed.
I wonder if the comic will have the parents undergo character development and growth as well. This has already happened to a small extent with the Browns, in fact. Certainly the kids are the focus of the story, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be interesting stories about the older generation.
…’Course, now that I’ve said that, I fear that these stories would end in said parents refusing to grow. Because not all stories have happy endings.
Of topic to this comic(sorry!)
I had an amazing idea as I was eatinf profiteroles that i then found out contains alcohol.
What is Joyce found out some food she loved sometimes came as an alcoholic version? Like trifle or something. She’d freak out and not trust any food.
What if she found out that the food she loved is always alcoholic, no “virgin” version available? That would really freak her out.
Another thing that might make her brain pop is if she starts thinking about how the majority of food is combined. I’m not talking burger, I’m talking about the bread in the burger. Flour, eggs, oil, sugar, salt….
(Replying to earlier comment)
But mister Willis, it just seemed very strange that all those links are just of people supporting you and junk. Also, where the heck did you get that I wanted “Racism isn’t real” from that sentence? I’m asking why you didn’t provide links that had nothing to do with your comic and were just previous studies or articles where interracial couples and their possible racism to their own children were done. I saw two very good links that you posted that were nice and presented your viewpoint very well, but when the majority of the links were just people complimenting your comic it seems a little strange.
Okay, next time I *promise* I’ll also post a bunch of links to white people telling me I’m wrong and that racism can’t happen in multiracial families because they feel it can’t, just so you get a balanced account. There will also be stuff about how the moon landing was faked and the world is 6000 years old and vaccines give you autism.
You know, so we hear from both sides. TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!
Holy tap dancing penguins man, I’m not asking for you to post stuff that goes against Interracial Couples being racist to their own kids, I’m asking you to post stuff that not just people patting you on the back for writing a good comic.
Once again, I’m gonna’ say it as clear as possible. I just wished there were more links PROVING that couples that feature two people of different ethnic backgrounds can be racist to wards their offspring. Not asking for a KKK article on the “Impurities” of mixed “Breeding”, not asking for a Fox News article, whatever the heck that’s about, I just wanted more links besides people commenting on your comic.
You don’t need an article to prove this. Fathers can be sexist towards their daughters, white parents can be racist towards their mixed race kids. There is nothing difficult to grasp here, especially considering that interracial relationships themselves are not free of racism (see: internalized racism, fetishization).
Like any and all of this is super evident to any aware PoC. ESPECIALLY women of colour, I think – I’m a man of colour, but listening to the stories of women I know and online really drives home how the intersectional oppression of race and gender make things that much worse.
> Fathers can be sexist towards their daughters, white parents can be racist towards their mixed race kids
So what you’re saying is that only their mom is racist and not their dad, since he’s not white? (to say nothing of the other implications of your chosen examples, since they’re not relevant to this storyline).
Their dad can’t be racist. He can help perpetuate racist ideas, but as a PoC he lacks the racial power/privilege to be racist.
Same thing goes for moms and sexism.
I can tell you’re gearing up to fight me on the “implications” of what I say, but trust me – the dynamics between a white person wielding racial bias is very different from the dynamics of a PoC wielding racial bias, especially if the PoC is from the same background as who they are biased against.
I categorically reject the idea that “racism” (or sexism) does not refer to all of these things. Saying it does not is basically the same thing as saying it only refers to card-carrying KKK members.
I don’t see how it matters where his power comes from, he clearly has power over his child as her parent. What makes it racism rather than sexism is the nature of the bias, not the nature of the power.
Do you not understand the distinction between person of power acting against oppressed person, and oppressed person perpetuating oppression against fellow oppressed person?
To use a crude analogy, the significance of your boss bullying you is much more severe than your fellow coworker bullying you.
This is exactly why men who make rape jokes are much, much worse than women who make rape jokes, even though rape jokes are a terrible thing regardless of who tells them. Men hold male privilege against women.
P.S. I really do mean it when I say it’s the same thing. Both arguments literally translate to “This one thing is different from this other thing, so only one of them can be racism”.
There were plenty of people talking about their personal family experiences in the list I provided, despite your downplaying of their existence. If they’re not enough, no amount will be.
Personal experiences are one thing, they have deep impact because it’s a single person retelling their dealings with said issues, but are you seriously telling me you couldn’t find one dang article to support this? Not one?
I love this comic man, I make it a habit to check whenever the updates happen within the hour, the drama this thing pumps out is something I don’t think I could go without, I’m basically a druggie hooked on your ability to pump out interesting stuff each night.
Comic wise, this is some of the best stuff I’m reading at the moment, but dang if you ain’t a hard person to have a conversation with man.
Look into the doll experiment and how when done a few years ago the results are the exact same. Then go back and take another looksie into the whole “Your hair looks better straight.” panel.
I believe he’s just saying that your sources are already clearly biased in your favor, therefor they hold less weight. Mr. Bologna is likely defending good journalism more than he is discussing race.
I don’t have the link, but I vividly recall reading an anecdote by one of the mods at This Is Not Japan. I think how it went is she is half white (dad), half Japanese (mom), and her parents are split. Her dad is a blatant Asian fetishizer (“yellow fever”), and hearing the comments he makes about East Asian women LIKE HERSELF and seeing him chase after young East Asian women is really having an impact on her.
That is an example of parental racism, though not quite what’s going on here.
Quite honestly that’s what I’m looking for Kladeos. I’m having trouble finding many of those articles myself, but I keep trying since this comic has kinda’ caused a piqued interest that I have to sate.
“One thing I will never forget is the time my dad made fun of my curly Latina hair in front of me to one of his male coworkers. I got my hair from him. It still hurts, and to this day I’ve never felt secure with my hair. I’ve developed trichotillomania and habitually pull out or cut off sections of my hair.”
Racism is subtle. It can be as simple as hoping your daughter inherits your white wife’s “good looks.” It can be making her ashamed of her skin tone and “lovingly” encouraging her to blow a lot of money to get it “fixed.” It can be making your son not listen to rap because you don’t want people to think he’s a gang-banger. It can be teasing your Latina daughter for going out of her way to learn another language, or encouraging her to dress up so she “doesn’t look like a maid.”
Hell, my half-Hispanic dad is really racist against Mexicans and thinks they ruined everything for the “rest of us.”
Parents don’t need to be a reason to be dicks to their kids. So of course they can do it with a big “reason” like racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia…
I think it’s really funny no one’s saying “You’d think parental instincts would override Blaine hitting Amber.” Eeshk.
I think what Bologna Man is trying to ask for are references to other real-world accounts and examinations of this sort of occurrence in life, like two of the articles you provided, and less much for a bunch of your fans’ Tumblrs saying, “Wow, this is a great and really realistic comic!”, be it as it may.
The problem is that it gets old. It shouldnt necessarily be anyone elses job to teach you how to be less ignorant, once you’re an adult. Its not that the request in itself is so bad, and its certainly innocent enough, but I’ve seen this discussion play out a million times: “This, that, or the other is a problem.” “No it isn’t I’ve never seen that!” “Yes it is here’s evidence.” “Oh well OK keep teaching me (is your evidence isn’t good enough)” “Sorry, not my responsibility…” “Well clearly you are hostile and don’t want me to learn!!!”
These requests get made SO OFTEN that they drown out the original discussion, and these things have all been said so many times, that explain ing them over and over is counterproductive.
Also, you don’t need a quantifiable data set to prove something exists… In this case, personal experience of several people is enough, isnt it? If someone made a comic about how they get cold in new england, and you’d never been there, would you need a study showing what percentage of people actually think new england is cold? That’s not the best metaphor, but in situations like experiences of racism, it doesn’t necessarily matter if all mixed race families, or even most, do this. It only matters that some, or any, do… And he’s already shown that with his links
Have you considered changing tactics? Instead of asking David Willis to be curious for you, you could be curious all on your own. Google even makes it easy! Search for things like “racism in inter-racial families” maybe? Exercise your brain and see what you can come up with on your own! It’s good for you!
People are still arguing this? Really? Really? Really?
Racism isn’t just guys with Nazi armbands and pointed white hoods. I’m as white as they get this side of Jim Gaffigan and even I realize that. Being racist doesn’t make you a mustache twirling villain. My girlfriend, whom I love more than anything, is Hispanic. And even then, even with a woman I see myself marrying someday, I catch myself making racist assumptions.
Racism is as much, if not more, a product of ignorance than hatred.
The Walkertons may not even be aware of the effect they have on Sal. Just because its not blaring, in your face hate speech doesn’t mean its not there.
David Willis, for this storyline and many more, you are a GORRAM genius. With the drama and comedy and social commentary, there’s a million and one pitfalls DOA could have fallen in to. And yet instead it stands a tribute to the fact that webcomics not only can but SHOULD be given the same consideration as classical forms of literature.
Here’s to another year of me checking DOA every night at 12:01 to see the master at work. Bless you Willis for creating so fine a work, and Damn you Willis for raising the bar to a level many will not reach.
The human race summed up in one head-exploding piece of stupidity and contradiction: Anybody different than me is bad, so I should go over there and ask them if they want a cup of tea.
I have this problem sometimes, because I don’t like broaching topics or being serious in general. It’s a comfortable little bubble which allows me to avoid conflict.
On another note, I wasn’t aware of these sorts of issues before(racial favoritism and such) so thanks Willis for bringing them to my attention. At first I was a bit upset because I like when people do stuff to their hair(perm, dye, straighten, bleach) and I thought he was trying to make a point that people should just accept their “natural hair” XD. But now that I’ve read what people have said about their experiences with this, I understand what the intention was.
Yeah I have to say at first I thought Sal was just being a bit dramatic, and then after reading the comments I realized I was in the same boat as Walky. When I think of racists I picture a bunch of dudes with pointy white hats going around lynching folks, but it’s usually a lot more subtle than that, isn’t it Willis? Thanks for opening my eyes a bit.
Not excuses, explains. It explains why she robbed a convenience store. What excuses it is that she was caught and punished for it, and has since corrected her behavior.
It doesn’t. But Sal has also already served her time and is not still living a life of violent crime, so I don’t really give much of a shit that she did. This isn’t fucking Loki we’re talking about for god’s sake “Oh, he’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, but he has daddy issues so it’s okay!” That’s not what’s happening here and you need to know the difference.
If you can’t write people who are not exactly yourself, there’s no point to writing, ever. There is no point to art. The idea that you can’t is dumb. Really dumb.
Sure, you might do it badly, and then folks should rightfully yell at you, but to “not be allowed” is amazingly stupid. I mean, what’s the alternative? Should my cast be entirely white? Should I ignore the concept of race? Would that make it okay? Is that the solution, to write a white, raceless story? Does that benefit anyone?
You seem to be missing the point, though The Heck did word it rather poorly.
There isn’t, or rather shouldn’t be, a problem with a white man writing PoC characters.
The problem is that the story you are writing is commenting rather deeply on the PoC experience and problems exclusive to PoC, something which you are not any kind of authority on, and indeed have no actual experience of.
Your story is an exploration of racism, but it is written from a position of ignorance and carries all the weight of a blind person writing an essay on the color orange.
I would be happy to have the wrong things pointed out. If it is ignorant, please let me know where it is in error and I will strive to be better in the future.
Yep, this sure was written from a position of ignorance. That must be why people are coming out of the woodwork to talk about how accurately this portrayed their life, while entitled white kids are complaining endlessly.
And a blind person that listened to enough seeing people talk about it would likely also be able to write an essay that accurately portrayed those people’s experience of the color orange.
But that essay would still be written from a position of ignorance, it would simply be a parroting and rephrasing of the words of others, written without any of the feeling that authentic experience of the color would grant and thus inherently without anything but marginal worth.
And without meaning to give offense to the work of David, that is exactly what this is, well meaning as it may be it is still simply a regurgitation.
He doesn’t even attempt to inject his own outsider’s perspective on the matter, something which, while it might have offended some, would at least have lent the story-line a reason to exist.
I would never tell anyone that they aren’t “allowed” to write whatever they please, but what I will do is examine the worth of what is written, and in this case I find none. From what I can tell it is simply an attempt at injecting an issue that David thinks is important, but he doesn’t actually have anything to say from his own perspective so it simply comes off hackneyed, especially when he insists on bluntly telling his readers that they aren’t allowed to interpret the words and actions of the characters within the story and instead saying “No you’re wrong, her parents ARE being racist, end of story”.
It is a disservice to intellect the readers, the integrity of the characters and the very issue it is attempting to draw attention to.
I also find it rather odd that you try to insist that everyone that isn’t swallowing what David is saying are “entitled white kids”
I mean, I’ve only read 1/20th of this single comment section, but I’ve seen at least one long, thought out dissenting comment from a PoC and I haven’t seen anyone disagree who wasn’t respectful about it, though in fairness that may be due to the comment moderation.
But regardless, making a strawman out of your opposition doesn’t actually help your cause in any way.
Except you don’t have to be the -subject- of racism to see it, nor do you have to have experienced -anything- to write about it, as long as your position is reasonably well researched. I doubt you’d disagree with this on principle, unless you’re planning to argue that this whole comic is a shallow display of ignorance because David Willis is not or has not been a straight gay bisexual asexual transsexual biracial chinese-american-black-white-saudi Jewish Muslim Christian Mormon Jew Atheist who loves dinosaurs, believes in evolution, loves transformers, had an abusive father, dresses as a superhero and fights crime, thinks evolution is bunk, Only owns one pair of shoes, loves taco bell, owns several pairs of shoes, doesn’t wear shoes, enjoys poop jokes, beats date rapists with baseball bats, is a date rapist, has been the target of date rapists, and sleeps with professors to improve his grades.
You know what is a disservice to the intellect of the readers? Telling them that they can’t possibly comment on the subject of racism, or contribute anything meaningful and productive to the dialogue unless they themselves have personally been subject to racial prejudice. “Ignorant” does not mean “has not personally experienced something”.
I never claimed that all dissenting opinions came from entitled white kids, but some of them definitely -are-, and you know what? I was, at one point, -one- of them. This isn’t a dialogue that started today, in this comment section.
Goldenhand, if it’s only valuable to write about things we have personally experienced, then we wouldn’t be able to have different cultures interact with one another in our stories. By your standards, a PoC wouldn’t be able to have authentic white people in their story because that is not their personal experience. I think there’s a lot to be said for exploring the place where cultures interact and overlap and since certain cultural experiences are pretty much mutually exclusive, people can’t have firsthand knowledge of all their characters’ experiences.
And I disagree that Willis sounds hackneyed. Since we are all in different places (mentally and socially, as well as physically) some of the issues that are overworked for some will be brand new for others. With such a diverse reading audience, it’s impossible to meet all of us where we’re at, but I applaud him for trying.
As far as him definitively stating that it is due to racism, I don’t think it’s a case where he’s insulting the readers’ intellects. I think it’s more of a case where he, as author, knows much more about the characters than we do and intimately knows their motivations, wherease we can only guess at them based on the little we’ve seen in story so far. Are you a fan of Firefly? There was a lot of speculation as to characters’ backstories. Someone could say to a writer, “because of X, Y, and Z clues, I think River is a robot” and only knowing what they’d seen up to that point in the show, that fan has come to a logical conclusion; however, if the writer came back and definitively said, no, she’s not, the writer is not insulting the fan, he or she is just coming from a place of greater character knowledge.
Just in case all the perfectly well-stated logical counterarguments are not persuasive, here’s an anecdote:
I’m 29-years-old, and relatively well-read. Though I’ve made a conscious effort to be accepting and kind to everyone who crosses my path, never in my life have I had a close biracial friend. That they might face racial prejudices within their homes is a thought that hadn’t ever really occurred to me until David Willis decided to write a storyline about it.
It’s simply a matter of circumstance. I’ve lived in Oklahoma almost all my life, and the population within my professional and social circles is overwhelmingly white. Thanks to what is almost certainly institutional racism, it’s unlikely that I or anyone with a similar upbringing would hear about this particular kind of racism except through literature, art, or performance.
It seems obvious to me, but please let me know if it requires expatiation, that the art most likely to appeal to any given audience is art by members of that audience’s culture. I connect pretty intensely to Willis strips because Joyce’s story resonates with my own confrontations with a upbringing by overbearing white fundamentalists, and I’m sure I’m not alone. That puts him in a powerful position to expose me and others like me to struggles we simply don’t witness in our daily lives.
I thank him for it and I think you should too. It’s important work, and I don’t see how it can possibly get done faster by silencing the few white voices talking about it.
As someone who is a “minority” along multiple axes, my opinion is that representation matters. Write stories that treat POC, women, queer people – especially characters that overlap in those categories – with respect. Do research into issues that are not your own. Listen and heed people whose experiences they are inspired by. Listen to criticisms! If you fuck up, own up to it. And in general defer to the lived experiences of people. Don’t mansplain or white wash or talk down to oppressed people.
It’s really easy to write an offensive caricature or press your preconceived notions onto subjects that are not your lived experiences, and writers should always be vigilant of that. But I’ve seen great depictions of queer women by a straight woman (Girls With Slingshots), a Chinese woman by a white woman (Octopus Pie), queer women, including a trans* woman, by a cishet man (Questionable Content), etc. These works all treat their characters with respect.
Just taking a moment to say I love the term mansplain. I am a born and raised mansplainer. I had never recognized what it was I was doing until someone spelled it out to me, and life has gotten immeasurably better for me now that I try to shut up and listen every now and then.
My success rate is like 10%, but still, immeasurably better.
You literally may as well ask if he should only write about white hetero male ex-religious web cartoonists who are really really really into Transformers. And only ones called David.
Honestly, as a biracial woman, it gives me hope for the world that a Midwestern white man who was homeschooled in an ultra-conservative religious home can write such culturally sensitive and thoughtful-discussion-generating comics. So, The Heck, hell yes, he should be allowed. Actually, I’d almost be willing to say he’s not allowed to stop. 😉
Kudos, Willis, after reading webcomics for almost 20 years, you quickly became my favorite webcomic author.
Are you arguing that “Dumbing of Age” would be *less* racist if it only included white characters, and *less* sexist if it only included male characters, and I presume *less* homophobic/transphobic if it only included heterosexual cis characters.
So basically you’re arguing that a version of “Dumbing of Age” where everyone was white cis male and hetero might be preferable from the point of view of the social justice movement (according to your opinion) than the current version where there’s diversity of races, genders and sexual orientations?
I’d like you to be clear if that’s indeed what you mean. Apologies if it’s not, but I don’t know how else to interpret the question of whether he should be “allowed” to write such diverse characters.
As a black guy and going through a similar situation as Walky I have to say, this is the worst subplot you have ever written. Love the comic, but this is terrible.
I’m sorry, but fuck Sal. Why is it suddenly ok for us to blame Walky and their parents for her life situation? Why am I supposed to feel bad that she has consistently done nothing but harm to her own existence and Walky hasn’t? As for the favoritism of their parents towards Walky, do you blame them? Walky has everything going for him, and Sal….Sal just doesn’t.
Sal getting ignored by her mom? I get that. How would you feel after raising a child for 18 years only to be constantly embarrassed and disappointed with their actions? How would you feel if you busted your butt off to provide your kid with a life better than what you had growing up, only to see them shit on it? Their mom? After spending nearly her entire adult life, watching one child screw up and not take any responsibility for her actions, she’s tired. She’s tired of trying and more importantly, she’d tired of hoping that Sal will change, just to be disappointed or hurt again. And for that, I can’t blame her.
What really upsets me with this whole subplot, is that you have made this an issue of race, and not an issue of consequence. As with most of your shittier characters, you try to explain away their actions by giving an excuse for it. Ethan is that. Danny is this. Sal feels inferior to her brother because he’s whiter than her…So her response is to act like the stereotypical “bad girl”? No. No no no. No. This is an excuse to her behavior. Sal tried to act out to receive attention from her parents, and is now dealing with how those actions have left a lasting impression on her parents, specifically her mother.
I love how people keep saying that “Walky needs to check his privilege”…What privilege!? He’s doing the right thing! He’s going to school, getting good grades, not getting arrested, and earning his place. So, just because he’s smart enough to pay attention in class, so he doesn’t have to study, so he can spend more time doing what he enjoys, he’s privileged!? You guys who said that? You can kiss the blackest part of my ass. Its a mole, on the top of my right cheek. Because if anyone is privilege, if anyone thinks the have the right to something without every having to earn it, its fucking Sal. I mean…Lest we have all forgotten, who was it that banged the class TA to get a better grade and got mad when that didn’t happen? Who was that? Oh yeah, IT WAS SAL. Sal has habitually screwed up her own life trying to compare herself to her brother, and she has habitually blamed others for her actions. She is the entitled one, not Walky.
I love the comic. Truly I do. But this is cheap, its ill written, and it tarnishes the name of a character most of us have grown to like in an unfair way. Walky and his parents are not to blame for Sal’s actions, and they are not to blame for the consequences she receives as a result of those actions.
David Willis, I’m sorry to say it, and while I respect your work and everything that you do, this is a shitty subplot. Pure and simple. I understand what you’re trying to do(there’s nothing like having a bunch of white people pet you on the head like a dog to really get the blood running), I do appreciate it the effort that you’re trying to put into telling people about an issue that does exist, this is a bad way of doing it.
You do raise a good point. Perhaps though, you have the cause and effect backwards. Sal isn’t supposed to be infallible, and her having faults doesn’t negate the racism being treated towards her. She’s acting out, because she is already being assigned as “someone who doesn’t fit in”. And so she rebels as it were.
Corey, but we don’t know how Sal got to the point where she robbed the store. You’re assuming she made bad choices her entire life but what if she didn’t? We don’t know yet which came first, the bad choices or the attitude of her parents. I know more than one person who was finally like, “F*** it! If you’re just going to assume that I’m doing X, Y, or Z and punish me for it when I haven’t done it, than I may as well go ahead and do it!” I’ve seen this in all sorts of situations — cheating in relationships, drug use, children being accused of lying about things, etc.
What we haven’t seen yet is that maybe the racism came first and then the bad behavior came second. And then the racism gave an excuse for her parents to blame her bad behavior on “being black” instead of them being rotten parents, so Sal developed into someone who consistently screwed up. Maybe this isn’t the first time she was ignored.
While this doesn’t excuse Sal of her actions, I think it does begin to call into question why she did all of these things. Doesn’t it make you wonder how much of an impact her parents had on this development? And how maybe it could’ve been different if her parents were different? Maybe Walky would actually try a bit harder if he knew he had to work for his parents love (or maybe he would throw more temper tantrums).
You don’t have to forgive Sal for everything she did to understand her upbringing. And I think what’s being implied here is that Sal didn’t always misbehave, and I can sorta feel that. Without Willis’ input/work to reference we can’t say for sure if Sal was a teeny monster or if she at least tried. But the favoritism started at some point, and I don’t at all think it started after the bad behavior started.
And to be fair, Walky doesn’t have to earn much of his parents love either, because he hasn’t ever shown working hard for it. We don’t know if that was the same case for when they were kids, either. Maybe Sal and Walky behaved the same for a while but for some reason, Walky was just *better* in his parents eyes, and that’s when the divide began.
Bottom line is. Someone being racist to you does NOT excuse your bad behavior, but it does help people understand why someone developed that way. Interactions are RARELY face-value, they’re developed all through out someone’s life, and I think it’s important sometimes to be reminded of how your jerky actions can ripple out and cause a vicious cycle like that. I feel like there’s a lot of ignorance on your part– not in terms of racism, but in terms of grasping that people are a product of both nature AND nurture.
Does anyone beside me have trouble with the concept that Walky is doing “better” than Sal? That he’s even getting good grades? He has the emotional maturity of a four year old, his main point of reference is cartoons, he seems to be ignorant about a LOT of stuff. At least Sal seems to be living in the real world.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Walky for his childish, almost blissful ignorance, and yes, I have cartoons and other childish obsessions that I’ve never outgrown– but if I were their parent…yeah, Sal gets into a lot of trouble. Yet I think Sal has a much stronger hold on the “real world” and I’d worry a lot more about Walky, if I were their parent.
Also—I need to look back in the archives—are the parents’ preference for Walky even? Or does one favor Walky more than the other? That needn’t be broken up along racial lines–the African-American parent might favor Walky more, for instance, for numerous reasons….but I’d be interested.
I don’t really see that it’s that stark a difference between them anyway. Sal might have taken a detour five years ago, but now she’s right here at the same school as Walky. Struggling more in her classes, but that’s not exactly worth starting a federal case over. They’re on the same rung of the ladder climbing at the same pace right now, and if one of them’s climbing smoothly and the other’s fumbling about that’s pretty inconsequential in the scheme of things.
Yet one of them gets the “our little doctor in the making” talk and the other gets “I notice you’re not pretty anymore”. Newsflash, when the hospital’s looking to hire they’re not gonna care who did a committed a preteen crime or who made more stupid decisions in college. Hasn’t closed any doors for herself just yet, so it seems hyperbolic to say that she’s shitting all over the good life her parents tried to give her.
I was just thiinking the same thing about Walky. He even admitted himself that he didn’t have to work very hard to get top grades in high school, for instance. This might not translate too well to college. His people skills aren’t that great–he’s friendly, but says hurtful things without realizing it. He has some really odd ideas about things like what constitutes “manliness”. Even though he’s thin he’s not even in good physical shape–he didn’t like walking up the hills on campus, and his diet doesn’t seem too healthy. He seems like he was somewhat babied by his parents, at least his mom, so things were easier for him than for Sal. He just goes along with things because that’s his personality, so he didn’t have to try hard to keep from rebelling against his parents–he just had to be himself. He likes sedentary stuff, so he wasn’t as likely to go out and get into trouble, but he didn’t have to try to stay out of trouble, it’s just the way he was naturally. I kind of doubt he did much he didn’t want to except whatever minimal work he had to do to get through school, and having to dress up better than he wanted to on certain occasions or maybe keep his room cleaner than he wanted to. Everything else just came naturally to him.
So yeah, even though I like Walky, I wouldn’t exactly point him out as someone who is doing/living better than Sal is–his problems are just different than hers are, and he didn’t get in trouble with the law when he was 13. I think Sal probably realizes she did wrong then–how long should her parents hate her for that, anyway?
Excellent post, but I don’t think anyone is supposed to come out of this story looking faultless, nor is it really about blame. No matter how shitty you are to anyone, it’s pretty much impossible to give them justification to point a knife at a stranger and threaten murder for money. What Sal did was horrible.
Still, she paid for it with her childhood–under the absolute best of circumstances, in a private school rather than a prison, but she paid for it nevertheless–and she’s obviously trying to do better with her second chance. She’s not terribly good at it, as you point out, but there’s a whole lot of room for improvement over ‘unsuccessfully robbing convenience stores’. It’s understandable if you disagree, but in my opinion, Sal’s not a villain, just a spectacularly unwise young woman.
Back to Walky real quick. He’s living well, as you point out, and he’s right to feel good about himself compared to the mistakes his sister made. If he wants to wash his hands of her and walk away, that’s well within his rights. But it would be sad. It would be a waste. She’s the only sister he’s likely to ever have, after all, and loving family often means loving them despite their mistakes. His goal in this storyline is learning how.
That’s why this whole argument about whether the claims of racism are legit or not seems misguided to me. It doesn’t matter if all the hair subtext was literally a hallucination with no foundation in reality. The impression of racially-charged judgment is real to Sal, and that’s all that should matter to Walky. He’s not a stranger on the internet trying to validate Sal’s wikipedia links, he’s her brother.
Independent of their parents, Sal obviously has some serious issues with race. She identifies as the black one, but only in the most negative possible ways, all resentment and no celebration. Her robbery was the worst, most miserably hateful stereotype American white people have about black people, enacted as if it were performance art with the stuttering hesitation of a 13-year-old girl. Her punishment, on the other hand, was probably the kindest, gentlest, most expensive gift her white mother ever bought her. The hateful truth is that most black kids would be mercilessly tried as adults and imprisoned for such an offense. And now she finds herself in a self-sabotaging love-hate relationship with the whitest guy in the cast (no offense intended, Jason). I can’t hope to disentangle all that, so I don’t want to attempt to reach any conclusion other than that Sal has race issues, whether or not her parents do.
And you know what? Her parents probably have made some mistakes raising their kids. Women already have enough undeserved stress tied up in their appearance; I can easily see a little girl feeling horrible about being told to straighten her hair. This isn’t to say that insensitive comments about Sal’s hair justify burglary! Nothing does. But her parents should still endeavor to do better.
That’s the thing about this comic. There really aren’t any mustache-twirling villains, just a whole lot of people with different upbringings doing the best they can. They make mistakes, some more obvious than others, and prove the quality of their character in how they try to do better.
It’s Walky! Walky had a lot of plots that Willis could have translated to DoA, but I’m glad that he chose this one. Reconciling with an estranged loved one is hard for anyone, no matter the reasons, and usually in small, intensely personal ways. It’s perfect for a college-age drama.
tl;dr: it isn’t necessarily about agreeing with Sal, it’s about engaging with her and showing empathy. It’s about having the conversation, instead of storming off in outrage. Walky doesn’t owe Sal anything, but he owes himself that much.
I don’t see that we’re supposed to blame Walky or the parents for how they treat Sal. We have seen that Sal thinks she’s treated unfairly. We have seen that her family doesn’t care what she thinks, and refuses to discuss it with her. It’s hard to tell who’s wrong or right in this conflict when one side is silenced before it gets to speak, but I believe the point is Sal is feeling that no one wants to listen to her, no one wants to give her a chance and no one likes her for who she is. And right or wrong, she would probably like someone to at least try to see where she’s coming from.
@Corey: I get the feeling that you are projecting your own situation on the comic. You’re making assumptions about Sal’s past and the cause-and-effect of her parents treating her and Walky differently vs. Sal behaving badly, and it feels like you’re defending your own position rather than Walky’s. But no matter how similar your situations may be, you can’t know that they’re identical.
Although the comic itself doesn’t prove anything any which way, Willis has at the very least strongly implied that 1) Sal’s parents really did treat her less preferentially than Walky, since way before she started acting out, and 2) it was because they perceived her as more “black” than Walky.
This doesn’t excuse Sal’s bad behavior, and that was never even the issue. The issue is: would Sal’s parents have treated her and Walky like equals if she had lived her life any other way?
What I’d like to ask Sal is, besides the hair thing, what other examples can she give to prove her point? I’m sure there are plenty, but I have yet to hear from her about the specifics. We’ll probably see some of that next year.
Well, Walky, at least, identifies as whiter than Sal, as seen in the “She’s black, I’m generically Beige” comment. We’ve also seen that Billie, who basically grew up with them, kinda thinks Sal might have a point. And now there’s Walky, who, once nobody’s getting in his face about it, is seriously starting to consider the possibility.
Truth is, none of the evidence is conclusive, because internalized racism rarely displays itself in overt acts of clear prejudice. The main reason that the author himself has gone from letting us draw conclusions ourselves (like he has in other stories) to saying “Yes, this is a real thing, get over it” is largely because of people loudly complaining that Sal COULDN’T POSSIBLY be right, because her parents are a mixed marriage and people can’t be racist against their own kids.
Aw man the year is almost over, does that mean we aren’t going to get a strip a day because of the kickstarter goal anymore?
Also, it’s nice to see Billie and Walky share a tender moment, reminds both them and us that they do care for one another, even if she did use to be a cheerleader.
I asked about that a month or so ago, and Willis said that the Kickstarter goal was a strip a day for an entire year from whenever it started …. so after checking the calendar I see we will continue to get 7 strips a week until sometime in May 2014.
2. I can’t believe how much ignorance “racial progress” has engendered. The fact that this society now believes that *noticing* or *talking* about race is racist (making it impossible to do anti-racist work, because how can you fight something you’re not supposed to be able to see?) is the mind-blowing result of decades of “colorblind” ideology.
Alright, finally weighing in since the race issue.
Honestly, I was in the “we had no real proof” camp. I didn’t deny it, but I did feel like Willis had jumped the gun, telling us before showing us. It was obvious that Sal was the lesser liked child, but I didn’t see where race had been shown to be the factor in all of it. Then I saw Karkat’s tumblr post, which was a fantastic recap of everything that’s gone down. It made me think.
It’s been subtle. But no less subtle than Sal being the one to emotionally scar Amber and there were people crying that out before it actually happened. And I feel ashamed as a reader that I didn’t see this.
Is racism something real in me for not seeing this?
I don’t think so. I don’t think another person can call me a racist rightly for this, in the sense that racism is the dislike or hatred for one of any perceived race, or prejudice towards them.
I have my own personal hair problems, and so I never saw Sal hair problems being her race. I remember her dialogue being her southern accent from IW! and never questioned it. And I’ve never color-coded mannerism, so saying “Walky acts white” strikes me the wrong way. But there is one very clear example that should have clued me in to the others, and one that should have waved a flag early on.
The fact that I let Walky’s remark “My sister is black, but I’m generically beige” just roll off my back as joke is sickening in retrospect. My problem is the lack of sensitivity. Lack of gravity.
This comic arc is a good reminder that I’m not done working on myself. My own initial preconceptions from growing up in a very homogeneous environment are still there, even after they’ve been eliminated from the surface of my personality. And I think that’s what the intention for this story arc was.
And I owe you an apology Willis. I posted a comment earlier about reserving judgement. I didn’t read through the archives and do my homework, but instead posted something quickly, and added fuel to the fire. A list of comments like mine just allow every commenter to piggyback to assumptions, and without stopping to really think, and really consider, I became part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
And thank you to Karkat/Jen/Jon, whose tumblr post made a huge difference in the way I interpreted the comic. The post was very well thought out and made an impact on me.
I think there’s two kinds of ignorance. Those who don’t really know certain things simply because they were never told, either because society hasn’t talked about it enough or just, as luck would have it, they missed out on the info along the way. People can passively continue a bad thing because they don’t get the context.
And then there’s ignorance where you willfully base your judgments against things you already know, or should know. This is the “active” kind of racism where you probably know what’s sensitive and just don’t at all care.
There’s danger in both types, but I don’t think the first type is worthy of condemning a person. That’s why I decided to root through the archives and find what I could. Racism is very sensitive, and in some ways, I think putting such a heavy public stigma on it works against us. We make it out to be a humongous thing of cartoon villainy that we can’t point to the little things and talk about how that’s racist without needing to provide a lot of evidence. People act like you accused someone of murder, and it distracts everyone from getting to the real discussion. Not that I wanna say it should be okay, but whenever there’s a media scandal regarding racism I wish people would focus on WHY something is bad, not how much of a bad person they are.
If this is an eye-opening experience, take it out in the real world with you. Being aware of the deeper meanings behind your interactions is never a bad thing.
Chiming in to say thanks for that post. I also found it pretty insightful. Regarding two types of ignorance, though? I wouldn’t be so quick to construct a dichotomy outta that. All humans are in a constant state of trying to reconcile what they know with what they learn, and there’s many degrees of acceptance and rejection. Moreover, there’s matters of courtesy and intellectual integrity to consider. I’d much rather be the neighbor of someone who kindly and honestly rejects my perspective rather than someone who caustically berates me for not shouting our shared opinion loud enough.
Communication is even more complicated than that. While you might be having a conversation about race, many people ostensibly involved are simply signalling allegiance to their chosen social groups by repeating blanket arguments or counter-arguments. On top of a broad spectrum of acceptance/rejection, on top of matters of courtesy, on top of matters of emotional context, there’s differing degrees of recitation versus engagement!
It’s complicated, and it is an ill impulse that leads people to break down complicated judgments into a false dichotomy of good vs. bad, us vs. them. Really, when that happens, most of the time it’s just someone remembering their own experiences and identifying that as sympathetic, then grouping all other experiences together and identifying that as unsympathetic.
I suppose it’s better to say there’s a healthy and unhealthy way to approach ignorance instead, then, because I do actually agree with the fact that bad things happen if you lump people in good vs bad. I meant all that in more of a way where there’s a forgivable level of not knowing what an issue is, but I suppose I focused on dividing a line between the two too much.
To that end the heavy public stigma against racism DOES distract from the real issue, and we focus on the person rather than why what they did was wrong. Just like it’s easy for Sal’s parents to blame her shortcomings on perceived racial identity, it’s easy for us to say all racists are monsters. Just like there’s a side that needs to be educated, there’s also a side that needs to heal and let go for a better future.
In my experience, calling anyone a monster for any reason is usually a selfish action. You can score cheap points reaffirming your own identity that way (that isn’t me!) or your membership in some social group (see how open-minded and progressive I am, I’m nothing like that guy!), but it does very little to actually change anyone’s mind.
Instead, engage in conversation. I don’t really care for the term ‘ignorant’ when it comes to racism; it seems… imprecise. Racism is a form of knowledge (X-skinned people are Y) that just happens to be incorrect. Consider that the problem may not be that people haven’t been taught the correct things, it may be that they haven’t really critically examined the incorrect things they have been taught. That suggests three forms of existent racism, examined and accepted racism, unexamined racism, and willfully unexamined racism.
It is easy to immediately leap to the conclusion that the first and third should be scorned while the second should be accepted as a target for education, but there are circumstances in which all three are understandable. There are those who have suffered by the actions of members of a race that already hates them. I won’t gainsay their reciprocal prejudices, only caution against a circle of reprisal. There are those who live good and useful lives, who spend their time and their compassion on issues other than racial equality and would rather not even think about it. I find that distasteful, but I’d rather comment on a webcomic than argue with them about it (and I know where quite a few of them live.)
Within the cultural context of this comic’s audience, neither is terribly likely, but removing the absolutes from the conversation invites those with racial prejudices to explain why they think what they do.
I too was in the “Sal is making a mountain out a molehill” crowd, but Willis has been pretty clear about saying Sal is right and Walky is wrong behind the scenes, so whatevs. I suppose now we just wait to see what Willis’ solution to this is!
I don’t know about you, but the fact that her mother essentially ignored her during her entire appearance would have been enough for me. If we extrapolate that to the majority of Sal’s life…
I’m not really sure how to put this into words. Have you ever been ignored by a parent? It is ABSOLUTELY SOUL-CRUSHING. I know, I spent the majority of my life utterly persona-non-grata to my father. Since I loathed NASCAR, hated country music, never would touch flannel, wasn’t good at fixing cars and didn’t orgasm over the latest auto show, I might as well not have existed. Hell, I had it EASIER than Sal, as my parents were parted before my birth, but living each and every day with a parent who completely disregards her existence because she isn’t EXACTLY what she wanted?
The problem is, we can’t extrapolate that to the majority of Sal’s life. Even accepting that there was some racial bias, you’re asking us to assume that their attitude towards Sal did not even get a little bit worse after the robberies. It’s obvious that it got worse, the question is just where it started.
I often check the comments, but by the time I get to them, there are just too many for me to read in my morning routine, so I skim down, looking for the ones that Mr. Willis comments on.
I was starting to think Mr. Willis was under a great deal of stress, or going through some personal crisis, since the tone of his posts seemed more and more strident.
Looking now at the things that he’s having to read and go through, I actually think he’s handling it all very well.
It’s a sign of his artistry and ability as a storyteller that he’s able to get so many people worked up, discussing tough topics so passionately. Keep up the good work, Mr. Willis! Thanks for this comic.
I would just like to say, before the idiots get the comments shut down again, that I personally was ignorant to the issue of hair straightening as a black/white thing, and while I would never go so far as to say hat mixed race couples can’t be racist or that people can’t be racist against their own children, I was one of those people who, at the time, thought that maybe his comment on her hair was just poorly phrased or there was some context that made it better than it sounded. (I may have been a bit desperate to see a parent that wasn’t horrible by that point in the story-line.)
But people in the comments section straightened me out (ha.) and gave me the historical and cultural perspective I lacked as a sheltered white dude, and it -changed my mind-. Because if you give a crap about what’s true, rather than what you -want- to be true, you have to be willing to do that.
So, for my part at the very least, to David Willis:
This storyline taught me something, and thanks for that.
I don’t know what’s amazing me more.
Is it the fact that we actually had to improve to reach this level of conversation about race?
Is it the comments that seem to argue that the writer is mistaken about what has happened to his own characters?
Is it my admiration of the author for putting up with the flood of patronizing corrections?
I can’t really tell.
I haven’t read all the comments, so sorry if someone has already said this, but I like how it’s Billie who’s teaching Walky here. In other stories, you’d have some wise, older guy, probably black, teaching Walky about hidden racism. And this man–oh yeah, it’d most likely be a man–would be some wise figure who never makes mistakes, never has his own story, is just there to dispense advice. But the fact is, sometimes we get good advice from unexpected places. Sometimes someone who is stupid about some things may be smart about others. And vice-versa. So here we have a stuck-up, snobby cheerleader who’s a little too obsessed with social status giving advice to an immature young man who’s probably a lot smarter than her in a lot of ways. And while she doesn’t give the advice in that perfect, sage way that the old cliche might have, she gives the advice in a way that Walky can hear. It’s very real. And it’s much more interesting. Especially in how it gives insight into Billie’s character, and how she’s starting to mature a little.
tl;dr Kudos, Willis, for not only tackling a difficult issue, but doing so in a way that is interesting, realistic, and an example of excellent storytelling.
Why castigate Walky for self-identifying as beige instead of black? When your background is from multiple sources, or whatever, it’s no shame to self identify as “everything”. That’s owning who you are. I’m me, I’m everything, and I refuse to wear your labels and self identify as one particular subsection of who I am. If you can’t handle that I’m everything, that I’m mixed, that I like being a bit of everything and aren’t going to limit my identity like that, then you’re the racist one, not me.
In the case of Walky identifying as biege, what I find interesting/telling is that he has labeled himself biege and his **twin sister** as black. Even though they are fraternal twins and not identical twins, for him to self-identify one way and identify his twin as something else seems really odd to me. My sister and I are both Asian/Caucasian, and we don’t say one of us is yellow and the other a pale cream, or something like that.
But… Fraternal twins happen when two eggs are fertilized at the same time whereas identical twins come from the same egg that decided to split itself in half. Wouldn’t the different be that even though they were born at the same time, there’s a possibility that their ratios aren’t the same?
I did kind of word that poorly, didn’t I? I meant gene ratio. All ovum and all spermatozoa do not carry the same DNA sequences, so I was bringing to light the possibility of one having genes that take after one parent more than the other, vice versa, and everywhere in between.
What I’m trying to say is that there is a possibility that for Sal her father’s genes shine forth more than her mother’s and that for Dave to have some sort of balance from both.
Yes, Kladeos got my point. As I stated in my comment, my sister and I (and we are NOT twins but are full siblings) have never stated that we are different races. And even though they are fraternal twins and not identical, people often perceive twins of any stripe as more similar than other types of siblings.
Plus, I’m not sure how there would be any difference in “ratios” when it comes to siblings and genetics. You get half of your chromosomes from your dad and half from your mom. You perhaps *could* make an argument that if the parents themselves were mixed race, the make-up of each sperm or egg would have variable race ratios (not that you probably should, but you could), but in the Walkerton’s case, the parents are not mixed race, so you can’t convincingly make the argument. (At least so far as my understanding of genetics and biology is concerned. Please, enlighten me otherwise if I am incorrect).
It was very surprising for me to find out that my sister identifies as Black.
I never really considered my racial identity growing up. Mostly felt that I should just be able to be Canadian like everybody else, because Jesus Christ it’s been nine generations, longer than most of these white fuckers trying to tell me I’ve got a heritage. My sister must’ve been 12 or something when I found out that she was identifying as Black, and it had apparently been going on for quite some time before I ever heard about it.
Can’t say I understand it, but I respect it. Figure it’s not my place to argue with her about that part of herself. Mom does a little bit. Does the “Well, mostly you’re white. Three quarters of your background is white.” Seems a bit condescending and disrespectful though. Let’s not talk like she doesn’t know what she is.
What’s especially interesting is I’m pretty sure Dad doesn’t even identify as black all that strongly. He apparently had a phase in highschool where he called himself “Clear”, though he talks about it today in a “I was such a douche” kind of way. He was taken to some predominately black churches at various points growing up and apparently their take on it was that if you’ve got any black in you, you’re completely black. Seems like there are multiple schools of thought on the subject. All I know is I always hated it when people would try and push that sort of stuff on me, so Sister’s probably got enough of that going on without me chipping in telling her she’s not black enough to be black. Plus it’s been enough years now that this pretty definitely isn’t just some phase she’s going through.
Brother came out full-blown British White with blond hair and blue eyes. Sunlight burns him like nobody’s business. Never heard him refer to himself as any race, but darned if people haven’t said it for him. What was always weird was the people who would say we looked nothing alike. We looked like pallet swaps of eachother when we were younger, though we’ve sort of grown in different directions as we got older. At one point in highschool I dyed my hair blond and people were mistaking me for him at every turn.
So that could tie into the ratios talk. My brother could never appear anything but British, I can pass for one of those darker european whites so long as I don’t get much sunlight, Sister looks pretty middle-eastern, though Sister and I were born with the same skin tone.
Perhaps, despite being twins, they nonetheless have different ideologies, different outlooks on life, different ways of responding to the same stimulus, and otherwise are different people. Why do I have to self identify as the exact same race or mix of races that my siblings self identify as? Perhaps we each have chosen to emphasize or otherwise embrace different aspects of our racial heritage.
At the time, I assumed that that was Sal’s self-identification and that he was just respecting her identity, rather than it being a label he was putting on her. Remember, this was before we knew anything about their parents.
It might be. I’m inclined to believe Walky doesn’t actually know that much about Sal’s thoughts on anything though, since they haven’t really been speaking to eachother in the last five years.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume you’re the one who sent me that ask on tumblr.
No one is criticizing Walky for his identity (at least I hope not). They’re criticizing -why- he might’ve chosen his identity. Just because you do it for the right reasons doesn’t mean someone’s gonna make the same conclusions for the right reasons, either.
Off-Topic:
AHH! ALL I SEE ARE GIANT WALLS OF TEXTS! You know, I think some of you could be writers, too. Most likely non-fictional writers, but writers nonetheless.
On-Topic:
You’re wrong, Billie. I didn’t laugh, so either that wasn’t a joke or that was a piss-poor joke.
At some point, the raw number of words people have typed about Willis strips surpassed the number of words he’s typed about Transformers. I wonder when that was.
All these posts are TL:DR, so apologies if I am repeating someone… but I can’t remember another time where walky and billie were actually demonstrating that they actually have a genuine emotional connection; most of the time they bicker like an old married couple (which also implies a genuine emotional connection, but not in a good way). Its billie’s smile that sells it for me… good work.
She also mentioned that she’s considers Walky’s parents her parents to a greater extent than the people who actually birthed her. Think they bicker less like an old married couple and more like some siblings do.
She just sometimes calls Walky’s parents Mom and Dad. Still, the sibling thing is there. Walky’s also refereed to their “Shallowly-Buried affection and lust, held at bay by Flimsily-Constructed social barriers, masqueradin’ as sibling-like rivalry” in jest recently.
I have been really, super enjoying all of Dumbing of Age, but the recent arc between Sal and Walky has surpassed all expectations I have ever had for a webcomic. I absolutely LOVE that we are getting to see a narrative that isn’t just the same old thing. And for what it’s worth, I saw evidence for the Walkerton parents’ racism before Sal ever said a word about it (and was then SO HAPPY when she brought it up). To be fair, I’m also probably older than most of your readers, so I’ve had time to be exposed to the context presented here.
Anyway. Thanks for writing such a compelling story. I was really skeptical about Dumbing of Age when you first started it (what more could be said about these characters???), but boy did you prove me wrong. I think DoA has said more about real life than just about any story — webcomic or otherwise — I’ve read in a long time.
Holy crap! It suddenly occurred to me that I have gone several dozen strips without hating Billie! Did we jump to yet another parallel universe where she isn’t a total bongo??
Billie isn’t a “total bongo.” She’s an abrasive person, but underneath it she’s as easily hurt as anyone else, she has good intentions. She drops the whole cheerleader persona when people actually need help.
Billie still feels miles away from the girl who dismissed Walky on the first day and had serious aversions to “nerds” for a long time after that. I think she has evolved thanks to Ruth and other circumstances like Joyce getting attacked.
This, this I like. Walky showing some progress and trying to deal with a troubling issue while staying true to the kind of person he is. And though Im still of the opinion Sal is atleast mostly to blame for her treatment, I’d actually like to see an answer to his question as well and see just how much of their parents actions were to blame and if it was racialy driven. I’m really curious to see where Willis is going with this story.
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Yes Walky. Good Walky. Reasoning Walky.
It’s a bit of an epiphany for people to realize they’ve been racist all along.
Woah, woah. His parents are one thing, but why do you think *Walky* is racist?
Internalized racism.
He turned a blind eye to what his parents were doing and forgave it– even justified it. Not to mention that sort of smug attitude he got when he said he didn’t identify as black.
He has a very subtle level of self-hatred, but it’s forgivable considering his up-bringing. People forget that you don’t have to be a monster (and not even a bad person) to be a little racist.
Was it really that smug or just smart-assed? And why is Walky pegged as racist for not choosing to identify as black like his sister does instead of as biracial/aracial (i.e. “generically beige”).
It’s something they have a clear difference of opinion on, but does that make Walky’s choice inherently bigoted for (a) not being the same as hers and (b) feeling superior about *his* choice as most people do to some extent about any difference of opinion?
It’s smart-assed, but there’s truth to jokes when it comes to Walky. He jokes about how he really feels to mask that stuff, so I’m more apt to believe there’s a genuine feeling of some superiority there.
He’s not racist for identifying as non-black. He has every right to that identity if it’s who he is. I have never ever said that in and of itself made him racist. It’s him feeling like he’s a little better than his sister for that identity that I have a problem with.
There *is* a sense of superiority that comes from his upbringing though– and even him pointing out the stuff about her hair is insensitive. He’s also quick to defend his parents and say “Hey you can’t be racist if you have an interracial marriage!” You have to wonder how much stuff as a kid he willfully blocked out because his special treatment meant he had to work less.
The problem here is that there’s a mix of factors going on in Walky’s head that are hard probably for even him to identify. He clearly does feel a bit superior to his sister, but it’s hard to say that that’s definitely because of racist motivations rather than years of favoritism being internalized along with Sal’s acting out for attention (including negative attention). I mean, it’s not really a stretch to feel better about yourself than a sibling who has committed felonies.
The problem is that tossing the word “racist” around is kind like lobbing grenades. Everyone has biases of some sort or another towards people different from them, but I’d be hesitant in tossing around a word for someone which most people equate with just a very specific form of “evil.”
Walky’s probably in more of a grey area with possibly some unconscious biases he isn’t aware of. It’s clear he’s not comfortable with the idea that his parents would harbor biases along those lines, so it’s doubtful he sees bias as a virtue. (That’s kind of where I draw the line on the issue; if you can justify your bias as “right” in your head, you’re probably over the line). It is odd though that he reads as someone who doesn’t even think about race (including no self-reflection on it) when he grew up in a situation where it was constantly in his face. Possibly some repression there.
… I really don’t know how to respond to this post.
Does calling it a personal bias really make it easier for you to accept? Did you not pay attention to the last few days of comics where Billie said racism isn’t always evil cartoon villainy?
Everything you described was internal racism.
Bias by very definition means you prefer one over another. Racism is the preference of one race over another. If Walky has an unconscious bias, how is that not internalized racism?…
I suppose I should say that I have a legal background, so intent matters to me for purposes of determining the “wrongness” of an act. Racism carries more intent than unconscious bias. That doesn’t mean that bias is okay, but calling someone racist generally sounds like you equate that person with open, conscious bigots.
And yes, there is a huge difference. Many people who are morally opposed to racism carry racial biases they aren’t aware of. Implicit association tests prove this. That doesn’t mean that these people are racists themselves — just that they have a flaw to be aware of and overcome. Given the level of discomfort that Walky has shown with the situation, I doubt he’s pro racial discrimination — just someone having to face some ugly truths he wasn’t prepared for.
If white superiority is racist, then beige superiority is also racist.
That’s cute, but nothing indicates that Walky feels beige people are inherently superior to black ones.
Look up shadism. It’s a real thing.
I’m aware it’s a thing. There’s just no strong evidence that Walky feels it, much less embraces it to the point where he could be called a supremacist.
…
For the love of god, you are actually doing the thing Walky did in the comic which Billie rebuked for being stupid. You are literally trotting out his “card carrying members of the Klan” line.
There is racism other than stuff at supervillain levels. The only racists aren’t “supremacists.” The Racism Dial doesn’t only have 0 and 10 on it.
You do racist things. I do racist things. Walky does racist things. Billie does racist things. We aren’t supremacists.
Learn this. Please. Before you deplete the world of its supply of strawmen.
@Willis: Which of us where you responding to? I could see it either way.
After all, that’s pretty much what I’m trying to say too. Bias is a spectrum, and people are going way too far in using words too far down the scale to describe Walky. Kind of like how people talk about Joyce half the time.
@Willis
You’re the writer of course so if you say he’s actually making the argument then he is.
But reading it without you adding word of god, I’d read that as hyperbole
That Sal might not be claiming their parents are members of the KKK, but she might as well be for the likelihood of it being true
As Willis has already indicated, everyone is a little bit racist, even if we don’t realize that we are. Avenue Q has a nifty song about the topic. It’s pretty good.
And Willis, for what it’s worth, I actually like this storyline, even if I was mistaken about the reasons for Sal’s parents treating her differently.
Well, it’s a catchy tune, but it’s not really great on this topic. The thesis is essentially “Everyone’s a little bit racist, so there’s no need really to examine your actions and change. Everything is forgiven!”
yeah, that’s exactly my feeling about that song.
The Bastard’s two cents on this issue:
I think racism is something inherent in our culture at this point in time. It would be practically impossible to find someone who has no bias whatsoever; whether they know it or not. However, “racism,” for me, extends beyond the color of one’s skin. It includes beliefs, heritage, culture, and even way of life. Think about it: do you feel some sense of superiority over someone who’s morbidly obese?
Our baby’s growing up.
Yeah, soon he’ll be off to colle-uh, getting a girlf…huh. I think Walky might be doing this backwards.
Perhaps tomorrow he’ll finish his vegetables.
By junior year he’ll be potty-trained.
And when he graduates, he’ll know how to tie his shoes.
…and maybe even own more than one pair of shoes.
Let’s not get carried away. Baby steps.
Nachitos are made from corn! (Allegedly.)
Corn is a seed 😛
These days, what isn’t
Well let’s see, there is “one interracial couple walks into a bar..”
And they forget they left their daughter in the car.
Poor Sal, outside, had to wait…
Then an idea popped into her head.
She would rob a Connivence Store to stop feeling irate!
Now Amber’s scarred for life.
And experience strife
(she had a REALLY bad day,
okay?)
And to make thing’s worse, her boyfriend’s gay!
To make it worse than worse her boyfriend’s dating another girl
An awful idea. She got a wonderful, *awful* idea!
And they said “oww!”
Is this the new team rocket intro?
What’s this?
Walky is evolving!
Congratulations! Walky evolved into More Adult Walky!
Now we just need to find his mega stone
I’m sure I had a spare Walkyite in here somewhere.
Not until we get him to Stage 3, Completely Adultish-Childish Walky
Wouldn’t stage three be: Mr. Walkerton?
Depends on how you evolve him. There are two ways More Adult Walky can evolve, and you get different results depending on which way you go. Mr. Walkerton is the result of More Adult Walky having Max Happiness and being put into the Daycare Center with a Dorothychu and having an egg. Adultish-Childish Walky happens if Walky reaches level 35.
And if you trade him holding the Bag of Nachitos he evolves into It’s Walky!.
More Adult Walky wants to learn how to phrase a serious issue as a joke. But More Adult Walky already knows 4 things to phrase as jokes. Forget a joke and learn Serious issue?
*8-bit pokemon evolution music*
Walky is now…. Runny!
25 levels and a sense of direction and he’ll be Sprinty
But at what level does he lose Pajama Jeans?
When he takes it to the next level with Dorothy.
Until then, he’ll need a steady supply of tissues.
Here, have my internet. It’s lightly used.
B B B B B B B B B B B B
Is it weird that Walky has probably had the largest amount of emotional growth outta the entire cast in the entire, what, two weeks of time they’ve been in college?
What about…Dina. I mean…comparitively speaking she’s gotten way more social.
He said 4 weeks in the prior strip, so it’s been close to a month it seems.
Move-in day was three weeks ago today.
I might say Joyce, but she’s been sliding back and forth so much she might be getting whiplash.
Billie’s not doing so bad for herself, either.
Billie probably is the best to ask, since she’s probably noticed it more from an outsider’s perspective.
Walky, you are a joke. So no matter What you said it’s funny.
“You have cancer”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahahahahahaaaa… I made myself sad…
And then, Walky got himself a gig with Funky Winkerbean.
He looks so sad in the last panel.
He looks downright pissed off!
He looks like he just smelled some shit.
Because that’s the angle eyebrows make for anger, now?.
No, he looks embarrassed.
Yeah, being able to turn everything into a joke must be his major purpose in life.
Oh good you may be redeemable, Walky. ‘Cause no one treats Sal like shit and keeps my respect. (Except Ruth.)
It really doesn’t matter if Sal is objectively right or not. If that’s the way she feels, that’s what Walky has to deal with.
If she feels like going on a murderous rampage and to wear people’s faces it’s still something Walky’s gotta deal with. Also the police.
“But think of all the perfectly roasted faces we get to munch now!”
There’s the difference between a thought and acting on a thought, which in theory still means something in the Yew Ess of Eyyy.
“Um…knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Noah.”
“Noah who?”
“Noah good way to address the topic of racial factors in parental favoritism?”
“…Keep trying, Walky.”
What is wrong with Walky’s eyes in panel 3? Does he actually have whatever the white part is called?
I guess you sort of need it to do certain expressions. If he just had the black dot, it would look like his whole eye migrated toward the back of his face, not that he’s looking back.
No, like most people his eyes are pure black to reflect the darkness within his soul. U_U
That means the majority of the cast has darkness in their souls. Sal, Danny, Leslie, Daisy, Joe, Riley.
At least Ruth broke free.
So did Mary (I think). What does that signify?
Wait, no, I guess her eye color just changed from black to brown.
He grows it every now and again. It’s an ability all the “no-whitesofyoureyes” share.
The white part is called sclera…or ‘the white of the eye’.
Oh no! Wally actually has sclera! Run from the terror!
I gave a whole speech on the eyes just yesterday. Does everyone comment at night?
Maturing ain’t easy.
I mean. Physically it kinda is.You could sleep forever and your body would do it for you.
Unless one starved to death first. Maturing is hard!
This was the element of Walky’s arc that had me bothered – that he wasn’t noticing or thinking about this. I’m glad to see now he is.
Pay no attention to the person here who’s been re-evaluating some things himself.
Ummm… I still don’t get why they would be racist towards their own children. I can understand favoritism, but how would they be racist?
Parents can be sexist towards their daughters. Parents can be racist towards their PoC children. No different. Being a parent doesn’t mean you can’t be racist.
Even so I don’t see how it got into a racial conflict, we haven’t seen enough of there parents to see anything like racism out of there characters or anything that could lead to that assumption.
We haven’t seen enough of sal and walky’s backstory to aculy say there parents are racist, oviously sal’s parents are a key role to her characters origen But I dont see how racism fits ther,favertism for there only son over there only daughter because they mainly wanted a boy than a girl maybe, ya that makes more since ( still fucked up)
But them being racest, I dont see how it could be racism beside sal saying, ” The only reason mom and dad love you more than me is because you less black than me!” And sal saying that out of nowhere is what led to all this.
http://karkat-san.tumblr.com/post/71509809408/you-came-out-whiter-racism-and-the-walkerton-twins
Also there is zero evidence for the gender theory. All signs point to race.
Read that entire thing twice
A.)Sal’s Hair is a physical trait just as skin tone is and doesn’t really count on the grounds that a woman’s hair is harder to maintain there hair than males especially for black females. Being black our being a member of any race takes a lot more than being born into it or shareing a couple of physical traits, you haft to embrace your heritage and culture , and walky hasn’t done that, and walky openly admits that he doesn’t do that,but neither does sal, and to be honest some of the things in that tumbler post where to open out of context and not a 100% of good gathered troop of fact and infromation.
And B.) because of that, There is just as much evidence that it is a race issue as there is evidence as it has to do with there gender, the gender “theory” just makes more since.
The main evidence we have(until more in-comic examples are presented) that the Walkerton parents are somewhat racist is that Willis himself suggests it is, thus invoking the Word Of God trope.
And with that my argument ben shot dead, then brought back to life then shot dead again
The problem is, other than what Willis said, we don’t know anything that Walky doesn’t, and we have no reason to think that Walky knows anything we don’t. Which means that when Willis calls us “runamuck ignorance”, he’s saying the same thing about Walky.
Seeing my post come up here is a little exciting, on a side note.
It is a good post and you should feel good. 🙂
(joking/memetic phrasing aside, I mean it.)
Excellent Tumblr post! The only thing I disagree with is the part about that strip where Sal’s hair poofs out of her helmet. The post says that strip is all about her hair shame, but I saw it as much more about her sleeping-with-Jason shame, and only a little bit about her hair shame at that moment. But there are plenty of moments to illustrate the racist undertones without that strip anyway.
That’s probably true. I literally went through the Sal tag so I didn’t see much context at some points (not to mention I made that thing REALLY early), so that’s probably what happened.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/villainy/
All the links below the comic, read them, now.
Here’s the thing though. Sure Sal may identify and be more identified as “black”, but in my opinion, stereotypes can be either ignored because they are only aesthetic (her hair), or overcome because they are born from the environment (violence). As an Only child Asian in New York, perhaps growing up in a melting pot reduced my exposure to racism, only noticing the less subtle varieties. Its just that racism was the last thing that occured in my head, despite her obvious issues with her parents.
Maybe they were
1. Disappointed in her intellect compared to walky
2. Disappointed in her violence compared to walky
3. Disappointed that they didnt get the looks they wished she had (But I don’t think that’s why walky’s the favorite)
Anything but shes stupid/violent/ugly because we consider her blacker than our son. Then again, when asked for race, i check other and write human, so perhaps I’m just naive.
OKAY when it comes to black people and hair it’s almost never just hair, there have been books, discussions, giant analytical debates about our looks in general and how they affect our lives.
Her father going “Your hair looks better straight.” is not just an errant comment in our communities. It’s not that it looks better because of her head shape, it’s that it’s closer to ‘good’ hair. Already telling her her hair is ‘bad’ or wrong the way it grows out of her head.
Believe me, we can get complexes over our hair, its length, texture etc. It’s a whole thing. I recommend watching Chris Rocks Good Hair for an abridged version.
So strike one, strike two could any number of things, she could be louder, she could be flashier, any number of things that we face in our fight with ‘respectability’ politics.
Forgive my stupidness, but outside of the context of this strip, how am I to know whether a preference for straight over curly hair in another is aesthetically or racially motivated?
Not saying anything does or doesn’t exist, just saying I’m not subtle enough to know. Also I like straight hair, so I’m a bit concerened there.
Those aren’t separate issues. Race and aesthetics overlap and interact (even though the same aesthetics can arise separate from race).
So is it different from or the same as preferring long hair to short hair?
In lots of communities there are certain traits, metaphors, topics, etc. that are so entangled with larger issues in that community that, if you are a part of that community, they can’t be brought up separate from their greater cultural context.
For instance, an artist on Deviant Art from a different country that does not have the race relation issues the U.S. has drew a picture of Obama (or was it an Obama supporter) as a gorilla. He had NO idea he was hitting a hot-button racist message in the U.S. (I forget what his metaphor was, but it really was innocent) and he was flabbergasted by the hate in the comments, especially since no one explained the faux pas to him until I did at about comment 500.
So even though he didn’t mean anything racist by “black man as gorilla,” it could not be read out of it’s larger cultural context. Just like if someone said to an Asian person, “Really? But I thought you’d be a natural at math!” or assumed an American Indian can hunt and track or when some creepy middle-aged men once told me that I would “make a good wife”.
Certain things are so steeped in the larger cultural context that they have so much more weight than the literal meaning of the words themselves. And Sal’s dad can’t even proclaim ignorance of the concept (Like the artist I mentioned above). He, as a black man in this country, is fully aware of what it means when he says a black woman’s hair looks better straight.
Different. I’m guessing you come from a race with lots of different hair possibilities. Consider that for many races there is basically one sort of hair. For African-Americans its curly, anything other than curly means work has been done to change it. The result is that hair has a very racial side to it.
Consider the expression “Gentlemen prefer blondes.” You probably didn’t notice that there is a racial dimension to it. Natural blonde hair isn’t possible for certain races, and even if it is it’s more likely to have come out of a bottle.
Thanks, both of you. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. It has always seemed to me that a thing should mean the same thing no matter who you say it to, (barring different languages) so I have difficulty with this kind of cultural subtext even when it isn’t about race, which has led to me putting my foot in it any number of times.
Doom, are you familiar with the Jungian Collective Unconsiousness? That sort of sounds like your belief that the a thing should mean the same thing no matter who you say it to.
Things definitely don’t work that way for pretty much anything. Heck, things aren’t even consistent for our own selves. Think about it, what we define as hot or cold is largely influenced by the temperature we most recently acclimated to. In the winter, a 60 degree day can feel balmy, amazing, and like t-shirt weather. In the summer, that same 60 degree day has people scrambling for their jackets. If we can’t have steady, constant meaning for things so basic as temperature perception, how can we have steady, constant meaning for anything so subjective as emotion, racial relations, familial relations, politics, religion, etc?
I think the difference may be (and i’m not an expert on the subject so someone feel free to correct me if i’m wrong) but the difference is ANYONE no matter what race can cut their hair short or grow it out long (excluding physical capabilities). My point is, hair length is not dependent on race.
However, i’m white, I identify as white, and my hair will never naturally grow like Sal’s. She is mixed, she might identify as black, and her hair is not naturally like mine. So no, its not the same as long hair/short hair, as natural hair texture is pretty much dependent on who your ancestors were, whereas hair length is dependent on whether or not they want their hair long or short.
Soozi, actually from my understanding (which is limited and imperfect) not all hair can be long. I have had black friends who have said that if they just let their hair grow out it doesn’t grow down, it either gets kinkier or grows out and up (I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics since they were just describing it and not showing it to me). So they can’t have long hair unless they straighten it. I don’t know what percentage of black people this applies to, if it’s only some or if it’s all. Sorry, I’m not better informed. I think I was told this is also the case with some people with Jewish heritage, but I’m not certain.
I’ve been told this two, Jen, by my girlfriend who is mixed (1/4 Chinese, 1/4 Indian, 1/2 black). Her hair gets to a certain length and then just breaks.
Aw shit. *too
Soozi: yes & no: a genetic basis can’t be used to separate things. On the one hand, hair length may lack a genetic basis, but the choice to cut your hair long or short CAN be ‘just’ aesthetics, BUT it can also be inextricably intertwined with issues of group identity, including politics. On the other hand, hair texture, color, etc., may have a genetic basis BUT we can choose to change those and those choices, too, might be ‘just’ aesthetic BUT in some social contexts they are totally intertwined with group identity and politics.
Exactly, in the black community it’s not until recently (I say recently but really early 90’s) where short hair was a thing, my family still kind of gawkps that I willingly cut my locs off around my shoulders instead of letting them grow long down to my butt. Because long straight hair is still more “desirable” as far as they’re concerned.
Or a better example, my cousin was letting her hair grow long, and she had it straightened. We went to beauty shop and they cut her ends because they were damaged. She cried. She cried long and hard because as far as she was concerned length was what mattered.
Please. It’s been repeatedly made clear by Willis and lots of commenters that everything about this situation is a real thing that actually happens, and that Sal is right. If it feels unrealistic, it’s because reality often does. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s because humans rarely do.
About the only thing Willis could do to spell this out clearer would be to sign a declaration in his own blood. Don’t make him do that. He needs that blood for his weekly deals with the devil, allowing him to keep up his unholy workflow and buffer size.
I keep saying that violence is probably motivated by the fact that her parents treated her badly. It’s classic misunderstood kid behavior to act up if they don’t get enough positive attention from their parents.
Walky isn’t really an overachiever so you could just as easily argue that they’d be disappointed in him for not being all that he could be if it were really about those traits at face value.
Also, the only reason why they’d be disappointed in her looks is if they associated the “black look” with a reason to be disappointed over. Sooo…
There’s a good bit of evidence suggesting there’s a motivator behind it all.
Some people won’t be satisfied ’til Sal’s parents had her a card stamped: “We hope this Racial Discrimination Experience reached you in satisfactory condition. If you should have any queries, please call 555-GRANDAD”
As I’ve said before, sometimes the huge stigma against racism actually works against us, oddly enough. Because it’s a big deal people need an overwhelming amount of evidence for the smaller (but still harmful), more subtle cases.
So then it becomes “how DARE you accuse me of racism over THIS,” and becomes a huge distraction from the actual problem.
…not that I’d change much of the stigma. I’d just like it to be more about the act instead of the perpetrator sometimes. But the media loves a circus…
In this case, they could be racist based on their attitudes.
Sal is angry, mean, quick to act on impulse, steals, lies and does what ever she wants. “Black” things.
Walky is calm, a bit nerdy, watches cartoons all day, is honest and behaves nicely. “White” things.
It comes of as favoritism mostly, but because of their big difference in behavior, it can also go to racism.
Then again Sal is the victim. The victim can think whatever they want. It could just be favoritism, but Sal thinks that its racism. And that is all that matters.
Regardless of race, none of the “black” things you listed are things that any parent should find acceptable. If there is a problem with people generally associating bad things with a certain race, that’s pretty irrelevant in the situation of Sal, who *actually did those bad things*.
We don’t know, do we, which came first? Was Sal stigmatized “black” because she behaved badly or vice verse? Was she even “bad” at first or just a rambunctious kid who tried a mother who was primed to see her as “bad” and blame that perception on “black”? We know that at 13 she was full of rage and committed a violent felony, but we don’t know exactly how she got there.
Everyone has been a victim of some unhappiness or another, and how they choose to respond to unhappiness matters too.
Sal felt her parents’ actions, and she probably didn’t instantly think of it as racism (or favouritism for that matter). But after many similar experiences, Sal discerned a pattern which was something akin to “I get treated differently for how I am.” Sal can change her hairs, but personality is a different beast entirely.
But to then go and say that all that matters now is that she feels like her parents treat her worse than her brother is, frankly, absurd. She feels downtrodden, she acts with fatalistic abandon. Both of these matter, not just to her, but to the people she interacts with.
Although she doesn’t act with fatalistic abandon. She rides a motorcycle, but that’s relatively mild, especially since she wears full leathers and helmet. It’s true she chain smokes, a crime against humanity (but slightly more white than black). She’s got some attitude, but hardly that extreme. She busted her hump in that math class trying to learn the stuff (before she turned to humping & her bust to try to get a grade). And she dressed up in her good girl costume and behaved ever so nicely during family weekend, only to be ignored by her mother, be told by her father ever so lovingly that she’s genetically defective, and got stupid Walkiness from her bro.
You’re right, of course, “abandon” is rather hyperbolic wording. It really only applies to knocking over a convenience store. But, as you are apt to point out, Sal takes actions that are risky. So I’ll stick to “fatalistic” to describe her general demeanour. She does have a part of her that tells her to wear a proper safety gear, to work for grades, to play a role for her parents, etc. She’s not daft, but she is wont to frustration, because she sees how much she has to work to be “good” for so little return.
I agree that she is readily frustrated. And I can agree that she hasn’t been very effective in her efforts. But I reject “fatalistic”, which I understand to mean giving up. Sal hasn’t given up.
I believe you may be thinking of “defeatism.” Fatalism is the mindset that “what I do can’t change what is inevitably going to happen anyway, so I might as well do whatever I want.” Defeatism, on the other hand, is “what I do can’t change what is inevitably going to happen anyway, so I might as not try to change anything.” Just for good measure, Stoicism is “what I do can’t change what is inevitably going to happen anyway, so why worry about it?”
I accept your distinctions, they’re important ones. Though I’ve learned “fatalism” meaning more like what you understand by “defeatism” — feeling trapped, unable to change the situation OR cope with it productively. In that sense “fatalism” can lead even to suicide as the only way out of an unbearable but unchangeable situation.
The anger, and the theft occurred AFTER the problem already started. Anger is an emotional reaction to something, it doesn’t occur for no reason and when she was literally starved for attention, it was of course going to just build up inside and force her to take attention-seeking actions (the robberies). Any attention is better than no attention at all to someone starved of it.
I still don’t entirely get it either, but I’m going to take a shot before ye incur the wrath of Willis.
Essentially, various traits and behavior are associated with, in this case ‘blackness’ or whatever. Sal’s curly hair being the one noted in the comic. In one tumblr comment Willis reposted, suggested that being rebellious was associated with Sal’s being black.
So the traits (beyond just the level of melanin) associated with race have value judgements involved. Sal’s and Walky’s parents prefer straight hair. To also dive back into the rebelliousness thing, I would assume as a rule that would be looked upon poorly.
So while they may not have explicitly judged Sal lesser for these traits associated with race, Sal still feels the effect. Also, by no means are parents free from any ‘isms’ related to their own children.
I may have botched the understanding or explanation somewhere, but I’m still learning too.
You can be, Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, and anything you want towards your kids, even subtly!
Ahhhhh as a biracial person, I can tell you that racism exists in the home. My mom is white, my dad was native american. My skin is light, so my mom tells me that I’m white whenever I bring up the fact that I’m native. Every. Damn. Time. My aunt is hispanic. My grandmother rationalizes this by saying “Mexicans are white.” Her words exactly. I am so upset that people don’t understand racism in the home.
I think I remember seeing your ask in Willis’s tumblr feed. I truely am sorry that you have to deal with this crap.
Oh gods I get the same thing at home. I was born in Chile and was adopted soon after birth by a 100% white man and a 100% latin woman. I self-identify as latin cause hey, that’s where I was born and cause of mum my first language was Spanish. But every time I say I am latin, not white, mum is like YOU’RE A WHITE AMERICAN. And I’m like… yeah I’m a US citizen but I was born in Chile so I’m latin, and dad is like “latins are white too” ^O__o^;;
As an aside, when I went to Guatemala (my families country of origin) the first time, my grandmother let me know that being called black or white really was not an issue in some latin american countries. They did not associate the hue of a person with something to be racist about, which was a big change from the US. It was not something to be worried about. Everyone in the family was a slightly different color and I was actually darker than most. However, being called a native of the country, she said, was something that could get you in trouble as they had been treated as second class citizens and were considered to be of lower class origins. I thought that was awful, but they both were depending on the cultural context.
I’m black but I’m light skinned. On both sides of my family, someone (at least once) has fucked a white person. My great-great-grandmother was half Native American and half white before marrying my great-great-grandfather who was black.
When I was a child I went to a summer day camp and we went swimming. I got darker over the summer and my grandmother complained how the day camp “Ruined” my “Good” skin. She is a hell of a lot lighter than me.
I remember an aunt telling me that straightening my hair will make white people like me because my hair will be straight like theirs. A lot of my family members think that light skinned = good and darker skinned = bad.
Since I was light skinned I got a lot of praises and words of endearment while my darker skinned cousins didn’t get it so much. Here was the defining moment: One of my favorite cousins passed away in May 2005, my and my other cousin’s (who is darker than me) graduating year. While a lot of people were at my aunt’s house a day before the funeral.
My grandmothers tells my various aunts, uncles, and older cousins that I would be graduating next month. My cousin chimed in that she would be graduating too. My various aunts, uncles, and older cousins (most of whom I’ve never met before until that day) gave me a lot of money. A lot more than my cousin.
My cousin was pissed at me and said that “You only got that money because you’re lighter and they think you’ll do a lot more than your life than me.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I still don’t know.
She hasn’t talked to me since.
I know we’re going back to racist supervillains here, but do people honestly not know that white slaveowners used to get black women pregnant and their kids would also be slaves?
Woo, he took my advice.
Yes, I’m totally taking credit for this.
Yay…Walky is learning!
Walky Wakes Up.
I s’pose this is probably my last chance to say it: I had doubts about Sal’s theory for a while, for two reasons: (1) Willis loves a twist, even if it means swerving from the real-world theme we thought we were dealing with (see: Jocelyn Brown and the two shifts in Shortpacked Malaya’s apparent sexuality), and (2) the previous incarnation of Sal was a voice of bleak pessimism, often wildly wrong about life, who was particularly good at inventing reasons to keep her loved ones at arm’s length. But at this point, the evidence is really piling up.
This turned into a nicely affectionate scene between Walky and Billie, too.
FUCK YOU for implying trans* people are not “real-world.” I am transsexual, and I live in the real world.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and posit that T meant we were being set up for the real-world theme “Joyce’s brother is gay,” and we got Jocelyn instead.
That is exactly right, yes. We thought we were getting one real-world theme, and instead got another. It wasn’t impossible for the same sort of thing to happen here when the issue was first raised, but even if I didn’t follow David’s Tumblr it’d be looking pretty unlikely by now.
In that case, I take the “fuck you” back. My apologies. Kinda riled up with all the people denying racism can exist in interracial marriages, between parent and child, etc etc.
I feel you.
I can’t go into details, but not long ago I had to edit a draft which seemed to assume neither gay NOR trans* people existed. The writer was slow to see the issue, and I had to kick up some dust before we got it resolved.
It’s easy to start reacting too quickly if you deal with too much of that. I tend to protect my psyche these days.
I doubted it too, actually. And It was mostly on the grounds that I have seen very few scenes with how Sal’s parents treat her and all I have to go on is that her dad liked her hair better the other way. Which could mean LOTS AND LOTS of stuff. But I guess in this case it meant Racism.
Outside of her parents, Walky’s comment that she’s black while he’s beige is very, very telling in hindsight.
Yeah, it really is.
Well, in the other universe, they weren’t raised in the same home either. IIRC Sal’s issues were partly based on how her adoptive parents treated her, though I don’t think it was about race. It’s fuzzy at this point since I haven’t read through it in a while.
Hm…I still want to know more about sals back story in this universe, Because thats is obviously the key to her character, I humbly beg for a flash back of what sal was doing before The robbed that store, it all has something to do with her parents
Oh, I’m sure we’ll get revalations and insights into Sal’s past.
In, like, 2017.
I’m sure we’ll be seeing that soon enough. (Most likely when Amazi-Girl confronts Sal, cus that’d be when it’d be most dramatic)
I still don’t understand this idea that Walky is “whiter” than Sal. What does that mean? They appear to have quite similar skin tones, I don’t know what Sal was referring to when she said this. I’m hoping for some flashbacks to clarify what their parents actually did or said to give her this idea.
Are you…for real? This has been discussed at length. Willis posted links days ago! Race is not all about skin tone. I’m honestly bamboozled that people are still playing the “same skin tone” card here.
I am getting annoyed just…cuz I’ve seen this conversation 100 times. Have we not explained this enough at this point?
Guess Willis was right. If explaining the problem really worked, then racism would’ve ended thousands of years ago.
Naw, cuz then there’d be people who understand it and just don’t give a shit.
In defense of “explaining the problem”: I attended an intensive workshop in college where we talked productively (with a trained moderator) about racism/homophobia/ableism etc etc and it was really helpful for me and a lot of other people. It was an excruciatingly painful eye opening experience and it changed who I am as a person for the better. I was never resistant to learn, I just hadn’t been exposed to enough people who were different from me. People who don’t want to see oppression will have a very easy time of turning a blind eye though.
I’m sorry that you found my question offensive, that wasn’t my intention. I didn’t see any links, I don’t generally dwell bellow panel all too often, or look for sources outside of a comic itself to explain things that are happening in it. But, after reading the link Kladeos posted, I’m still not really satisfied. Maybe curly hair is associated with black people more, but it isn’t a trait exclusive to black people. And, in the case of her father who has curly hair, his preference for her hair to be straight could be just that, a preference. Or it could be self loathing or related to being picked on for his hair as a child. With so little information, even offhand, about their parents, in this universe, I’m having a hard time being sold on this. It also suggests that Walky being a better student than her reenforces him as “white” and Sal being a bad student reenforces her as “black” but, too me, it seems a strange thing to say because smart kids are usually favored over their less smart siblings anyway.
I wonder how many links to personal stories of racism in interacial families I gotta post before you can be “sold” on it. Is it more than twelve?
Well if the stories are told in the form of a joke, it’ll probably only take six.
The stories are told in the form of links from a dozen people I gave two days back while the comments were closed.
David, can I call you David? You mind if I ask why most of those links are just posts of people defending you’re current arc? Obviously there’s more information out there about this subject, I mean it’s the internet for goodness sake. Fair question, don’t meant any hostilities or anything.
Because I’m not going to post a bunch of links to “racism isn’t real!” If you want that, go watch Fox News.
Presumably because that’s what his inbox/tags are full of, and because those posts are directly responding to this storyline and often to the comments already on the site, so they are particularly relevant to the current discussion.
The man raises an interesting point.
It’s not the one he was trying to make but- What is your preferred address? It’s kinda commonplace in the comments to just refer to you as Willis, but I’ve actually always thought it was a bit brusque to refer to someone exclusively by their last name.
“Because I’m not going to post a bunch of links to “racism isn’t real!”” – they didn’t ask for links to ‘the other side’, they asked for links that support _your_ side but aren’t directly talking about your comic.
It’s irrelevant. If the claim is “mixed-race families can’t possibly be racist,” then it doesn’t matter how much the hell the examples talk about my strip. If there’s just one damn example of mixed-race family racism, then the claim fails. I’m not somebody’s monkey chasing after their moving goalposts.
I’m not saying you should. I’m saying that your fox news talk is a horrible misrepresentation of what Tommy Bologna said.
Look, I’m not denying that these things exist. It’s just everyone on here seems convinced that Walkys parents are racists now and we haven’t really even met them. Obviously you know, but, to me, I hear Sal, who often seems supernaturally predisposed to the irrational when it works in her favor, making unsubstantiated claims and I doubt it. Especially when, the only time I saw her with her parents, they seemed disappointed that she was going to hair appointment instead of spending the day with them.
My thought is…IT COULD BE ANYTHING. It could be Sal being wrong. They could be ignoring her for other reasons. I t COULD be anything. But word of god kinda has told us that Sal is right so that’s the truth.
1. When did Sal behave irrationally or make unfounded claims in Dumbing of Age?
2. When she ditched her parents, her mother was still ignoring her, and her father made zero attempt to dissuade her or walk/drive her over and doing anything to extend his time with her. Fuck that, they didn’t visit her damn daughter on move-in day or this day. They came for Walky. Sal had to go to them.
She tries to sleep her way to a good grade with a TA. That doesn’t seem the most rational of decisions. Though, maybe she secretly just had an insatiable desire to sleep with Jason, which I’d contend is very irrational on the basis that he’s Jason. She ignores teachers, her RA, doesn’t study, generally bad decisions in my view. Love her though, don’t get me wrong.
You don’t know she doesn’t study. Joyce told her to get hep from her TA, so she did. They sat through a very frustrating tutoring session (I get the impression that teaching isn’t Jason’s strong suit), and when that didn’t go anywhere, they slept together. I think Sal got the impression he was offering sex for grades because he started taking off his bow tie, but I could be wrong. Key point: she went to him for help, it just didn’t work.
Why shouldn’t she ignore Ruth? Ruth was behaving very poorly to her and Billie. Not at all like a responsible RA.
And we’ve yet to see her interact with teachers. You can’t say she ignores them. The only teacher we’ve really seen is Leslie and Sal isn’t in her class.
So basically you’re projecting or misremembering all these facts about her.
Not true, we’ve also seen Alex, the teacher for the into to computers class. Danny and Amber are the only named characters in that class, so your main argument still stands.
He wanted to quit when she wanted to keep working at the math. HE should be fired for having sex with her. PERIOD.
Why is it that for you to take a person’s point as honest, they need to be 100% rational? A character can be irrational and still make very good points. Often times their issues are just put off as irrational, which contributes to more irrationality, etc. etc.
Now, in terms of setting a character up, it can be difficult if you write “this is comic relief character AND FOR ONE SCENE TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY” but that isn’t what happened. We’ve seen Sal behave in different ways multiple times. Like with the roommate agreement where she was clearly the rational one, and Billie was just a bit irrational.
Sal has been irrational, but that has never been her defining character trait. She is multi-faceted. And part of that facet is having issues with her parents. And just cause she’s the one complaining about it, doesn’t mean she’s wrong.
But you have a point, her parents don’t seem to be involving themselves in her life. I got the impression that her dad cared but maybe was just trying to allow her independence, but her mom does seem coldheartedly uninterested.
If I were her I wouldn’t believe my dad truly cared about me, behaving like that.
Even with her parents being racist( and I still don’t know what kind of racist at this point), her actions are still hers alone right? I mean, her parents didn’t shove a knife into her hands and tell her “Go rob a convenience store, also don’t forget Walky’s Nachito’s”, she chose to go and do that. Honestly I think the whole family just needs therapy, big time.
Why is everyone ignoring the very specific detail that Sal says it ISN’T about the robbery, the preferential treatment has been happening SINCE THEY WERE BORN.
Because she robbed a gosh darned store. Even when the parents were acting the way they were since the kids were born, Sal robbing a store with a freakin’ knife didn’t help things. You don’t think I’m tired of people ignoring the racism that’s present? Honestly when this whole thing started I just thought it would play out like the typical “Parents favor the son” routine, but it didn’t and that’s cool cause now we get to see all of this unravel before our eyes, but you can’t just ignore the fact that Sal robbed a dang ol’ store.
Sequence of events:
1. Sal dresses up all prim and proper
2. Parents act cold to Sal, who is behaving unlike herself to impress them
3. Sal ducks out, and despite minimal interactions/neglect, says that visit was relatively painless
4. Sal gets hair straightened (after dad makes hair comment), then looks sad
5. Walky sees her in her outfit, and mocks her
6. Sal accuses him of always having an easier time than her
7. Walky pulls “I’m not a criminal” card
8. Sal explodes and says this all started at their birth, because he was born whiter
So yeah, this isn’t about the robbery. The whole set up was to let us know that the robbery was a red herring, if you will, because there are problems ignoring that.
1. At some point Sal and Walky’s parents start showing favoritism towards Walky since he’s “Whiter” than Sal.
2.This continues on for a while, making Sal depressed and/or angry.
3. She robs a store
4. Boot camp? Can’t remember but it was something similar if I recall.
5. Sal arrives at College, one of the first things we notice is that she dislikes her natural locks because they cause her problems when she wears her bike helmet.
6. Sleeps with a teacher because of mixed signals. Or no signals, whatever.
7. Parents days. Sal decides to have her hair go back to naturally curly, wears a dress, and tries to act like a good well behaved child, which is odd since her parents are supposed to dislike her for having, racial wise, non-white hair.
8. Father comments on her hair, like all dads do when they can’t think of anything to say, mom is ignoring her daughter.
9. Walky puts his foot in his mouth and pokes the Tiger after Sal gets her hair back to how she normally has it.
10. Big argument, they don’t speak to each other.
Robbery has a place, it’s not the main reason, but you can’t just ignore it.
Tommy, Sal didn’t “decide to have her hair go back to naturally curly”. It went back without her wanting it to do so. If I recall correctly, it had to do with stress.
Ya its not just the skin, being black is a culture, and sal is way more into the black community than walky, even though sal hasn’t once hanged out with a nother African-American, and the fact she has a daliss accent and adopted the personality of a white biker girl wait a minute…who did sal say who was whiter than who now?
There is a difference between how YOU see Sal and how Sal’s PARENTS see her.
Wow really? So southern accents are a white thing only? I’m afraid you need to take a trip to the south yourself and meet some black people living down there.
http://karkat-san.tumblr.com/post/71509809408/you-came-out-whiter-racism-and-the-walkerton-twins
Walky learns new move TACT, I wonder what move did he lose to gain it?
I hope “arbitrary gender rules that no one else subscribes to.”
I think he lost that when he learned “Girlfriend.” No wait. The shoe thing. Nevermind.
Can he please forget that move? It damages the opponent and the user, those moves are always crap.
Walky will try to apologize to Sal, but Amber’s imitating the lyrics of the most controversial song of The Prodigy with her.
Funky shit?
Walky is an interesting character as he’s full of so many nice things and good will, but then says stuff like “invisible sky wizard” and insults not only Joyce in a painful manner but everyone who shares even part of her beliefs. He’s got a lot of anger in him and disdain that I wonder, really, might come from a dark side to his parents.
He’s not as far apart from Sal. It’s just that they have different ways of dealing with insecurities.
I don’t know that’s it’s anger and/or disdain. He’s always seem to have a severe lack of tact when it comes to expressing his true feelings. He seems to find Joyce and her beliefs more annoying than anything, but I don’t think he’s trying to hurt her.
Regarding religious beliefs with disdain dos not mean that you have anger issues. It could be that he just thinks the belief is silly, and he is a person for whom “tact” is completely foreign.
I have to admit, its terrifying having my pathetic bubble of disbelief of racism in interracial couples popped, sending me spiraling down to my glass floor of denial( which I broke) before hitting the cold hard ground of the world(which surprisingly also pulls away, as “the world” is a subjective perception, into a colder spike pit of reality.) People never cease to amaze me.
On the other hand I actually believe that their parents are not necessarily racially intolerant bastards. There was a study where they went to black majority preschools and presented young black girls with Barbie dolls, black and white, and asked them which ones were prettier or “better”. The majority of the time they picked the white Barbie, not because they were racist( completely possible to be intolerant of your own race), but because a sort of brainwashing occurred. Society almost idolizes the image of a young, thin, white woman as the symbol of beauty. Thus the sort of self loathing over image in black communities as black woman tried to look more like white woman by straightening their hair and such. It’s possible that walky and sal’s dad suffers from a similar sort of brainwashing while their mom is acting on learned behavior as her social learning center attempts to make sense of the situation before discerning its safer to act the same way. This is all done subconsciously as we’ve seen her to be FAR too much of a ” visionary” to fall into a pitfall like that of her own volition.
What you’re describing is internalized racism, and a lot of PoC have it. Takes effort to learn that it’s okay to embrace your heritage. Part of why it’s so angering when white people appropriate our cultures.
Um, Carlos, hate to burst your bubble more, but how is young black girls believing whiter is better NOT racist?
One of my friend’s nieces (half black; father left; she lived with her white, overweight mother – this is relevant) loved Disney movies but, as they owned a really crappy TV, she could not see the movies, she could only hear them. She loved dolls and characters that looked like her and her mom and thought her mom was beautiful. Also, when she would draw pics of the Disney princesses, her imagination always painted them to look like her.
After a few years (the girl was about to start kindergarten) mom saved up and bought a good TV. Now she could finally see the Disney princesses. Suddenly, she wanted to be whiter, didn’t like her curly hair, wanted white dolls and asked her mom one day in a heartbroken voice, “Mom, are you not pretty?” To which her mom replied, “No, honey, a lot of people don’t think so.” So she learned really quickly that white and thin were pretty and since she didn’t have one and her mom didn’t have the other, neither were beautiful and therefore not “worthy” of the things the princesses accomplished or were given.
Gods, the whole thing still breaks my heart.
I don’t know for sure what you mean by “racially intolerant bastards”, but that’s not the same as “racist” – as Kladeos points out. Her dad seemed glad to see her and affectionate (vs mom), but look at what he told her — ouch.
Fogel, could you elaborate on how “racially intolerant bastard” and “racist” differ? I’m sorry, I think I missed something, they seem fundamentally the same to me.
I think his point is mostly about the fact that racism can be a sliding scale from relatively well-meaning internalized prejudices (like, believing that all people should be treated equally, but having some of the aforementioned preconceptions about beauty) to extreme racial prejudice, while being an “intolerant bastard” pretty much means they “don’t take kindly to you people around here”.
To wit, being a racially intolerant bastard is a type of racism, but not all racism involves being a racially intolerant bastard.
Which is kinda the crux of this whole storyline, to be honest.
Ah, thanks, Heavensrun.
Yes, Heavensrun stated very well what I intended in the context of this discussion.
What I intended but did not spell out clearly, as Heavensum did!
I wonder how many of the “are we sure the parents are racists” questions are genuine and how many are just meant to prod Willis.
If that was my goal, I’d pick something more provocative for Willis.
Like “Cool Ranch Doritos Loco Tacos are better than Nacho Cheese.”
Aren’t they?
HERESY!
Your avatar is perfect for that.
Why would that provoke him? That statement is true.
“Armada Hot Shot is a terrible toy.”
“Batman isn’t very good at anything.”
I think that Walky and Sal are dealing with the same damage caused by their parents racism. Sal was treated as bad/black by her entire family, and Walky was treated as good/white by their parents. Sal was isolated from family, friends, and her own home for FIVE years. Walky seems to have retreated from friends and family for the same five years(the cartoon comment is quite telling).
My list for worst parent in no particular order:
Blaine
Linda Walkerton
The Billingsworths
Ethan’s Mother
They have all permanently scarred their children.
*Mrs. Seigal
Had to go look it up. Went completely blank on the name.
Our lists match up.
People are flawed. Parents are people. Therefore, parents are flawed.
I wonder if the comic will have the parents undergo character development and growth as well. This has already happened to a small extent with the Browns, in fact. Certainly the kids are the focus of the story, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be interesting stories about the older generation.
…’Course, now that I’ve said that, I fear that these stories would end in said parents refusing to grow. Because not all stories have happy endings.
They fuck you up, your mom and dad
(rest of lyrics omitted, as they’ve been posted/linked here before)
Does anyone else get the feeling that Sal is not going to make it easy for Walky to apologize for dismissing her views on their parents?
She’ll only accept his apology if he can beat her in a 100 consecutive mario kart races on her new 3ds.
Why should she trust him? He’s been a crappy brother. She has her guard up for a reason – to protect herself from getting hurt.
Sal is angry and defensive BUT she’s still reaching out to her family. I’d be more concerned about how Walky approaches her.
Of topic to this comic(sorry!)
I had an amazing idea as I was eatinf profiteroles that i then found out contains alcohol.
What is Joyce found out some food she loved sometimes came as an alcoholic version? Like trifle or something. She’d freak out and not trust any food.
What if she found out that the food she loved is always alcoholic, no “virgin” version available? That would really freak her out.
Another thing that might make her brain pop is if she starts thinking about how the majority of food is combined. I’m not talking burger, I’m talking about the bread in the burger. Flour, eggs, oil, sugar, salt….
Joyce isn’t against alcohol, she’s just underage right now.
I knew a gal who wouldn’t eat champagne rhubarb. It happens.
oh whoops missed this last one. I didn’t realize you posted at 12:01 east coast time.
I’m a huge fan of the Billie-Walky friendship (#mixedracepowerduo) but I can’t wait to get back to Amber’s drama too… conflicted
Funny, I caught up the day this whole started, with Sal and Walky fighting.
I saw this comic on tumblr from someone reblogging its (tactful) handling of biracial issues. So glad I did!
Yay more Billie and Walky! Next lets have some Dina and Joyce!
Has Dina and Joyce ever ended in anything other than an evolution debate?
(Replying to earlier comment)
But mister Willis, it just seemed very strange that all those links are just of people supporting you and junk. Also, where the heck did you get that I wanted “Racism isn’t real” from that sentence? I’m asking why you didn’t provide links that had nothing to do with your comic and were just previous studies or articles where interracial couples and their possible racism to their own children were done. I saw two very good links that you posted that were nice and presented your viewpoint very well, but when the majority of the links were just people complimenting your comic it seems a little strange.
Okay, next time I *promise* I’ll also post a bunch of links to white people telling me I’m wrong and that racism can’t happen in multiracial families because they feel it can’t, just so you get a balanced account. There will also be stuff about how the moon landing was faked and the world is 6000 years old and vaccines give you autism.
You know, so we hear from both sides. TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!
Holy tap dancing penguins man, I’m not asking for you to post stuff that goes against Interracial Couples being racist to their own kids, I’m asking you to post stuff that not just people patting you on the back for writing a good comic.
Once again, I’m gonna’ say it as clear as possible. I just wished there were more links PROVING that couples that feature two people of different ethnic backgrounds can be racist to wards their offspring. Not asking for a KKK article on the “Impurities” of mixed “Breeding”, not asking for a Fox News article, whatever the heck that’s about, I just wanted more links besides people commenting on your comic.
You don’t need an article to prove this. Fathers can be sexist towards their daughters, white parents can be racist towards their mixed race kids. There is nothing difficult to grasp here, especially considering that interracial relationships themselves are not free of racism (see: internalized racism, fetishization).
Like any and all of this is super evident to any aware PoC. ESPECIALLY women of colour, I think – I’m a man of colour, but listening to the stories of women I know and online really drives home how the intersectional oppression of race and gender make things that much worse.
> Fathers can be sexist towards their daughters, white parents can be racist towards their mixed race kids
So what you’re saying is that only their mom is racist and not their dad, since he’s not white? (to say nothing of the other implications of your chosen examples, since they’re not relevant to this storyline).
Their dad can’t be racist. He can help perpetuate racist ideas, but as a PoC he lacks the racial power/privilege to be racist.
Same thing goes for moms and sexism.
I can tell you’re gearing up to fight me on the “implications” of what I say, but trust me – the dynamics between a white person wielding racial bias is very different from the dynamics of a PoC wielding racial bias, especially if the PoC is from the same background as who they are biased against.
I categorically reject the idea that “racism” (or sexism) does not refer to all of these things. Saying it does not is basically the same thing as saying it only refers to card-carrying KKK members.
I don’t see how it matters where his power comes from, he clearly has power over his child as her parent. What makes it racism rather than sexism is the nature of the bias, not the nature of the power.
Do you not understand the distinction between person of power acting against oppressed person, and oppressed person perpetuating oppression against fellow oppressed person?
To use a crude analogy, the significance of your boss bullying you is much more severe than your fellow coworker bullying you.
This is exactly why men who make rape jokes are much, much worse than women who make rape jokes, even though rape jokes are a terrible thing regardless of who tells them. Men hold male privilege against women.
Just because I understand the distinction doesn’t mean I accept it as a proper place to draw the line between “racism” and “not racism”.
Just like you don’t consider a rape joke to not be a rape joke when it’s made by a woman, even though you do say it’s less bad.
P.S. I really do mean it when I say it’s the same thing. Both arguments literally translate to “This one thing is different from this other thing, so only one of them can be racism”.
The dad can be racist, just not to his own PoC.
There were plenty of people talking about their personal family experiences in the list I provided, despite your downplaying of their existence. If they’re not enough, no amount will be.
Personal experiences are one thing, they have deep impact because it’s a single person retelling their dealings with said issues, but are you seriously telling me you couldn’t find one dang article to support this? Not one?
I love this comic man, I make it a habit to check whenever the updates happen within the hour, the drama this thing pumps out is something I don’t think I could go without, I’m basically a druggie hooked on your ability to pump out interesting stuff each night.
Comic wise, this is some of the best stuff I’m reading at the moment, but dang if you ain’t a hard person to have a conversation with man.
Look into the doll experiment and how when done a few years ago the results are the exact same. Then go back and take another looksie into the whole “Your hair looks better straight.” panel.
What is that? Oh right, it’s the sound of the author tearing his hair out.
Damn you have good hearing.
It’s a gift… and a curse
Dude, it’s not anybody else’s responsibility to educate you. You’re online, aren’t you? Loot it up yourself. Lazy.
When the claim you are arguing against is that “x does not happen” the only thing you need to contest the claim is an example of x happening.
I believe he’s just saying that your sources are already clearly biased in your favor, therefor they hold less weight. Mr. Bologna is likely defending good journalism more than he is discussing race.
Mr. Bologna was my fathers name.
I don’t have the link, but I vividly recall reading an anecdote by one of the mods at This Is Not Japan. I think how it went is she is half white (dad), half Japanese (mom), and her parents are split. Her dad is a blatant Asian fetishizer (“yellow fever”), and hearing the comments he makes about East Asian women LIKE HERSELF and seeing him chase after young East Asian women is really having an impact on her.
That is an example of parental racism, though not quite what’s going on here.
Quite honestly that’s what I’m looking for Kladeos. I’m having trouble finding many of those articles myself, but I keep trying since this comic has kinda’ caused a piqued interest that I have to sate.
Misc. stories & posts: http://weareallmixedup.tumblr.com/tagged/family
One such story:
“One thing I will never forget is the time my dad made fun of my curly Latina hair in front of me to one of his male coworkers. I got my hair from him. It still hurts, and to this day I’ve never felt secure with my hair. I’ve developed trichotillomania and habitually pull out or cut off sections of my hair.”
Thanks.
Racism is subtle. It can be as simple as hoping your daughter inherits your white wife’s “good looks.” It can be making her ashamed of her skin tone and “lovingly” encouraging her to blow a lot of money to get it “fixed.” It can be making your son not listen to rap because you don’t want people to think he’s a gang-banger. It can be teasing your Latina daughter for going out of her way to learn another language, or encouraging her to dress up so she “doesn’t look like a maid.”
Hell, my half-Hispanic dad is really racist against Mexicans and thinks they ruined everything for the “rest of us.”
Parents don’t need to be a reason to be dicks to their kids. So of course they can do it with a big “reason” like racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia…
I think it’s really funny no one’s saying “You’d think parental instincts would override Blaine hitting Amber.” Eeshk.
Well put, Karkat-san.
I think what Bologna Man is trying to ask for are references to other real-world accounts and examinations of this sort of occurrence in life, like two of the articles you provided, and less much for a bunch of your fans’ Tumblrs saying, “Wow, this is a great and really realistic comic!”, be it as it may.
Aaaand I should clear my cache more. But for pete’s sake, one of them was the Hallelujah song. Is it wrong to ask to be educated?
It kind of is when the entire internet is at your disposal, and you already know what to look for.
The problem is that it gets old. It shouldnt necessarily be anyone elses job to teach you how to be less ignorant, once you’re an adult. Its not that the request in itself is so bad, and its certainly innocent enough, but I’ve seen this discussion play out a million times: “This, that, or the other is a problem.” “No it isn’t I’ve never seen that!” “Yes it is here’s evidence.” “Oh well OK keep teaching me (is your evidence isn’t good enough)” “Sorry, not my responsibility…” “Well clearly you are hostile and don’t want me to learn!!!”
These requests get made SO OFTEN that they drown out the original discussion, and these things have all been said so many times, that explain ing them over and over is counterproductive.
Also, you don’t need a quantifiable data set to prove something exists… In this case, personal experience of several people is enough, isnt it? If someone made a comic about how they get cold in new england, and you’d never been there, would you need a study showing what percentage of people actually think new england is cold? That’s not the best metaphor, but in situations like experiences of racism, it doesn’t necessarily matter if all mixed race families, or even most, do this. It only matters that some, or any, do… And he’s already shown that with his links
Well said, jk.
Have you considered changing tactics? Instead of asking David Willis to be curious for you, you could be curious all on your own. Google even makes it easy! Search for things like “racism in inter-racial families” maybe? Exercise your brain and see what you can come up with on your own! It’s good for you!
People are still arguing this? Really? Really? Really?
Racism isn’t just guys with Nazi armbands and pointed white hoods. I’m as white as they get this side of Jim Gaffigan and even I realize that. Being racist doesn’t make you a mustache twirling villain. My girlfriend, whom I love more than anything, is Hispanic. And even then, even with a woman I see myself marrying someday, I catch myself making racist assumptions.
Racism is as much, if not more, a product of ignorance than hatred.
The Walkertons may not even be aware of the effect they have on Sal. Just because its not blaring, in your face hate speech doesn’t mean its not there.
David Willis, for this storyline and many more, you are a GORRAM genius. With the drama and comedy and social commentary, there’s a million and one pitfalls DOA could have fallen in to. And yet instead it stands a tribute to the fact that webcomics not only can but SHOULD be given the same consideration as classical forms of literature.
Here’s to another year of me checking DOA every night at 12:01 to see the master at work. Bless you Willis for creating so fine a work, and Damn you Willis for raising the bar to a level many will not reach.
The human race summed up in one head-exploding piece of stupidity and contradiction: Anybody different than me is bad, so I should go over there and ask them if they want a cup of tea.
Tea? Tea is bad and wrong, and so is anyone who drinks it.
Was *that* the point?
So how are those migraines Willis?
I have this problem sometimes, because I don’t like broaching topics or being serious in general. It’s a comfortable little bubble which allows me to avoid conflict.
On another note, I wasn’t aware of these sorts of issues before(racial favoritism and such) so thanks Willis for bringing them to my attention. At first I was a bit upset because I like when people do stuff to their hair(perm, dye, straighten, bleach) and I thought he was trying to make a point that people should just accept their “natural hair” XD. But now that I’ve read what people have said about their experiences with this, I understand what the intention was.
You ARE reaching people, Willis.
Yeah I have to say at first I thought Sal was just being a bit dramatic, and then after reading the comments I realized I was in the same boat as Walky. When I think of racists I picture a bunch of dudes with pointy white hats going around lynching folks, but it’s usually a lot more subtle than that, isn’t it Willis? Thanks for opening my eyes a bit.
I hope people don’t think having racist parents excuses the fact that she robbed a convenience store
Not excuses, explains. It explains why she robbed a convenience store. What excuses it is that she was caught and punished for it, and has since corrected her behavior.
It doesn’t. But Sal has also already served her time and is not still living a life of violent crime, so I don’t really give much of a shit that she did. This isn’t fucking Loki we’re talking about for god’s sake “Oh, he’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, but he has daddy issues so it’s okay!” That’s not what’s happening here and you need to know the difference.
Willis, do you ever wonder if, as a white male, you should be allowed to write female or PoC characters?
If you can’t write people who are not exactly yourself, there’s no point to writing, ever. There is no point to art. The idea that you can’t is dumb. Really dumb.
Sure, you might do it badly, and then folks should rightfully yell at you, but to “not be allowed” is amazingly stupid. I mean, what’s the alternative? Should my cast be entirely white? Should I ignore the concept of race? Would that make it okay? Is that the solution, to write a white, raceless story? Does that benefit anyone?
You seem to be missing the point, though The Heck did word it rather poorly.
There isn’t, or rather shouldn’t be, a problem with a white man writing PoC characters.
The problem is that the story you are writing is commenting rather deeply on the PoC experience and problems exclusive to PoC, something which you are not any kind of authority on, and indeed have no actual experience of.
Your story is an exploration of racism, but it is written from a position of ignorance and carries all the weight of a blind person writing an essay on the color orange.
I would be happy to have the wrong things pointed out. If it is ignorant, please let me know where it is in error and I will strive to be better in the future.
Yep, this sure was written from a position of ignorance. That must be why people are coming out of the woodwork to talk about how accurately this portrayed their life, while entitled white kids are complaining endlessly.
And a blind person that listened to enough seeing people talk about it would likely also be able to write an essay that accurately portrayed those people’s experience of the color orange.
But that essay would still be written from a position of ignorance, it would simply be a parroting and rephrasing of the words of others, written without any of the feeling that authentic experience of the color would grant and thus inherently without anything but marginal worth.
And without meaning to give offense to the work of David, that is exactly what this is, well meaning as it may be it is still simply a regurgitation.
He doesn’t even attempt to inject his own outsider’s perspective on the matter, something which, while it might have offended some, would at least have lent the story-line a reason to exist.
I would never tell anyone that they aren’t “allowed” to write whatever they please, but what I will do is examine the worth of what is written, and in this case I find none. From what I can tell it is simply an attempt at injecting an issue that David thinks is important, but he doesn’t actually have anything to say from his own perspective so it simply comes off hackneyed, especially when he insists on bluntly telling his readers that they aren’t allowed to interpret the words and actions of the characters within the story and instead saying “No you’re wrong, her parents ARE being racist, end of story”.
It is a disservice to intellect the readers, the integrity of the characters and the very issue it is attempting to draw attention to.
I also find it rather odd that you try to insist that everyone that isn’t swallowing what David is saying are “entitled white kids”
I mean, I’ve only read 1/20th of this single comment section, but I’ve seen at least one long, thought out dissenting comment from a PoC and I haven’t seen anyone disagree who wasn’t respectful about it, though in fairness that may be due to the comment moderation.
But regardless, making a strawman out of your opposition doesn’t actually help your cause in any way.
Except you don’t have to be the -subject- of racism to see it, nor do you have to have experienced -anything- to write about it, as long as your position is reasonably well researched. I doubt you’d disagree with this on principle, unless you’re planning to argue that this whole comic is a shallow display of ignorance because David Willis is not or has not been a straight gay bisexual asexual transsexual biracial chinese-american-black-white-saudi Jewish Muslim Christian Mormon Jew Atheist who loves dinosaurs, believes in evolution, loves transformers, had an abusive father, dresses as a superhero and fights crime, thinks evolution is bunk, Only owns one pair of shoes, loves taco bell, owns several pairs of shoes, doesn’t wear shoes, enjoys poop jokes, beats date rapists with baseball bats, is a date rapist, has been the target of date rapists, and sleeps with professors to improve his grades.
^love this
You know what is a disservice to the intellect of the readers? Telling them that they can’t possibly comment on the subject of racism, or contribute anything meaningful and productive to the dialogue unless they themselves have personally been subject to racial prejudice. “Ignorant” does not mean “has not personally experienced something”.
I never claimed that all dissenting opinions came from entitled white kids, but some of them definitely -are-, and you know what? I was, at one point, -one- of them. This isn’t a dialogue that started today, in this comment section.
Goldenhand, if it’s only valuable to write about things we have personally experienced, then we wouldn’t be able to have different cultures interact with one another in our stories. By your standards, a PoC wouldn’t be able to have authentic white people in their story because that is not their personal experience. I think there’s a lot to be said for exploring the place where cultures interact and overlap and since certain cultural experiences are pretty much mutually exclusive, people can’t have firsthand knowledge of all their characters’ experiences.
And I disagree that Willis sounds hackneyed. Since we are all in different places (mentally and socially, as well as physically) some of the issues that are overworked for some will be brand new for others. With such a diverse reading audience, it’s impossible to meet all of us where we’re at, but I applaud him for trying.
As far as him definitively stating that it is due to racism, I don’t think it’s a case where he’s insulting the readers’ intellects. I think it’s more of a case where he, as author, knows much more about the characters than we do and intimately knows their motivations, wherease we can only guess at them based on the little we’ve seen in story so far. Are you a fan of Firefly? There was a lot of speculation as to characters’ backstories. Someone could say to a writer, “because of X, Y, and Z clues, I think River is a robot” and only knowing what they’d seen up to that point in the show, that fan has come to a logical conclusion; however, if the writer came back and definitively said, no, she’s not, the writer is not insulting the fan, he or she is just coming from a place of greater character knowledge.
Just in case all the perfectly well-stated logical counterarguments are not persuasive, here’s an anecdote:
I’m 29-years-old, and relatively well-read. Though I’ve made a conscious effort to be accepting and kind to everyone who crosses my path, never in my life have I had a close biracial friend. That they might face racial prejudices within their homes is a thought that hadn’t ever really occurred to me until David Willis decided to write a storyline about it.
It’s simply a matter of circumstance. I’ve lived in Oklahoma almost all my life, and the population within my professional and social circles is overwhelmingly white. Thanks to what is almost certainly institutional racism, it’s unlikely that I or anyone with a similar upbringing would hear about this particular kind of racism except through literature, art, or performance.
It seems obvious to me, but please let me know if it requires expatiation, that the art most likely to appeal to any given audience is art by members of that audience’s culture. I connect pretty intensely to Willis strips because Joyce’s story resonates with my own confrontations with a upbringing by overbearing white fundamentalists, and I’m sure I’m not alone. That puts him in a powerful position to expose me and others like me to struggles we simply don’t witness in our daily lives.
I thank him for it and I think you should too. It’s important work, and I don’t see how it can possibly get done faster by silencing the few white voices talking about it.
As someone who is a “minority” along multiple axes, my opinion is that representation matters. Write stories that treat POC, women, queer people – especially characters that overlap in those categories – with respect. Do research into issues that are not your own. Listen and heed people whose experiences they are inspired by. Listen to criticisms! If you fuck up, own up to it. And in general defer to the lived experiences of people. Don’t mansplain or white wash or talk down to oppressed people.
It’s really easy to write an offensive caricature or press your preconceived notions onto subjects that are not your lived experiences, and writers should always be vigilant of that. But I’ve seen great depictions of queer women by a straight woman (Girls With Slingshots), a Chinese woman by a white woman (Octopus Pie), queer women, including a trans* woman, by a cishet man (Questionable Content), etc. These works all treat their characters with respect.
Just taking a moment to say I love the term mansplain. I am a born and raised mansplainer. I had never recognized what it was I was doing until someone spelled it out to me, and life has gotten immeasurably better for me now that I try to shut up and listen every now and then.
My success rate is like 10%, but still, immeasurably better.
You literally may as well ask if he should only write about white hetero male ex-religious web cartoonists who are really really really into Transformers. And only ones called David.
Do you wonder if he should be allowed to write about Transformers if he isn’t one?
I hate it when people are both wittier and more concise than me.
No kidding. I’m kinda wondering why I bothered typing all that stuff up there now.
Obviously you weren’t allowed to write something witty and concise because you’ve never been a snappy comeback before.
HANG ON. You’re not Heavensrun. Are you allowed to write about him?
Would it end up something like this? http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1863
Honestly, as a biracial woman, it gives me hope for the world that a Midwestern white man who was homeschooled in an ultra-conservative religious home can write such culturally sensitive and thoughtful-discussion-generating comics. So, The Heck, hell yes, he should be allowed. Actually, I’d almost be willing to say he’s not allowed to stop. 😉
Kudos, Willis, after reading webcomics for almost 20 years, you quickly became my favorite webcomic author.
Let me be sure if I understood what you mean.
Are you arguing that “Dumbing of Age” would be *less* racist if it only included white characters, and *less* sexist if it only included male characters, and I presume *less* homophobic/transphobic if it only included heterosexual cis characters.
So basically you’re arguing that a version of “Dumbing of Age” where everyone was white cis male and hetero might be preferable from the point of view of the social justice movement (according to your opinion) than the current version where there’s diversity of races, genders and sexual orientations?
I’d like you to be clear if that’s indeed what you mean. Apologies if it’s not, but I don’t know how else to interpret the question of whether he should be “allowed” to write such diverse characters.
That last panel is the first time I’ve really gotten the whole Billie and Walky relationship.
They’re basically siblings.
And Billie has an incest fantasy.
God, I hope Sal kills her parents
As a black guy and going through a similar situation as Walky I have to say, this is the worst subplot you have ever written. Love the comic, but this is terrible.
I’m sorry, but fuck Sal. Why is it suddenly ok for us to blame Walky and their parents for her life situation? Why am I supposed to feel bad that she has consistently done nothing but harm to her own existence and Walky hasn’t? As for the favoritism of their parents towards Walky, do you blame them? Walky has everything going for him, and Sal….Sal just doesn’t.
Sal getting ignored by her mom? I get that. How would you feel after raising a child for 18 years only to be constantly embarrassed and disappointed with their actions? How would you feel if you busted your butt off to provide your kid with a life better than what you had growing up, only to see them shit on it? Their mom? After spending nearly her entire adult life, watching one child screw up and not take any responsibility for her actions, she’s tired. She’s tired of trying and more importantly, she’d tired of hoping that Sal will change, just to be disappointed or hurt again. And for that, I can’t blame her.
What really upsets me with this whole subplot, is that you have made this an issue of race, and not an issue of consequence. As with most of your shittier characters, you try to explain away their actions by giving an excuse for it. Ethan is that. Danny is this. Sal feels inferior to her brother because he’s whiter than her…So her response is to act like the stereotypical “bad girl”? No. No no no. No. This is an excuse to her behavior. Sal tried to act out to receive attention from her parents, and is now dealing with how those actions have left a lasting impression on her parents, specifically her mother.
I love how people keep saying that “Walky needs to check his privilege”…What privilege!? He’s doing the right thing! He’s going to school, getting good grades, not getting arrested, and earning his place. So, just because he’s smart enough to pay attention in class, so he doesn’t have to study, so he can spend more time doing what he enjoys, he’s privileged!? You guys who said that? You can kiss the blackest part of my ass. Its a mole, on the top of my right cheek. Because if anyone is privilege, if anyone thinks the have the right to something without every having to earn it, its fucking Sal. I mean…Lest we have all forgotten, who was it that banged the class TA to get a better grade and got mad when that didn’t happen? Who was that? Oh yeah, IT WAS SAL. Sal has habitually screwed up her own life trying to compare herself to her brother, and she has habitually blamed others for her actions. She is the entitled one, not Walky.
I love the comic. Truly I do. But this is cheap, its ill written, and it tarnishes the name of a character most of us have grown to like in an unfair way. Walky and his parents are not to blame for Sal’s actions, and they are not to blame for the consequences she receives as a result of those actions.
David Willis, I’m sorry to say it, and while I respect your work and everything that you do, this is a shitty subplot. Pure and simple. I understand what you’re trying to do(there’s nothing like having a bunch of white people pet you on the head like a dog to really get the blood running), I do appreciate it the effort that you’re trying to put into telling people about an issue that does exist, this is a bad way of doing it.
You do raise a good point. Perhaps though, you have the cause and effect backwards. Sal isn’t supposed to be infallible, and her having faults doesn’t negate the racism being treated towards her. She’s acting out, because she is already being assigned as “someone who doesn’t fit in”. And so she rebels as it were.
Corey, but we don’t know how Sal got to the point where she robbed the store. You’re assuming she made bad choices her entire life but what if she didn’t? We don’t know yet which came first, the bad choices or the attitude of her parents. I know more than one person who was finally like, “F*** it! If you’re just going to assume that I’m doing X, Y, or Z and punish me for it when I haven’t done it, than I may as well go ahead and do it!” I’ve seen this in all sorts of situations — cheating in relationships, drug use, children being accused of lying about things, etc.
What we haven’t seen yet is that maybe the racism came first and then the bad behavior came second. And then the racism gave an excuse for her parents to blame her bad behavior on “being black” instead of them being rotten parents, so Sal developed into someone who consistently screwed up. Maybe this isn’t the first time she was ignored.
While this doesn’t excuse Sal of her actions, I think it does begin to call into question why she did all of these things. Doesn’t it make you wonder how much of an impact her parents had on this development? And how maybe it could’ve been different if her parents were different? Maybe Walky would actually try a bit harder if he knew he had to work for his parents love (or maybe he would throw more temper tantrums).
You don’t have to forgive Sal for everything she did to understand her upbringing. And I think what’s being implied here is that Sal didn’t always misbehave, and I can sorta feel that. Without Willis’ input/work to reference we can’t say for sure if Sal was a teeny monster or if she at least tried. But the favoritism started at some point, and I don’t at all think it started after the bad behavior started.
And to be fair, Walky doesn’t have to earn much of his parents love either, because he hasn’t ever shown working hard for it. We don’t know if that was the same case for when they were kids, either. Maybe Sal and Walky behaved the same for a while but for some reason, Walky was just *better* in his parents eyes, and that’s when the divide began.
Bottom line is. Someone being racist to you does NOT excuse your bad behavior, but it does help people understand why someone developed that way. Interactions are RARELY face-value, they’re developed all through out someone’s life, and I think it’s important sometimes to be reminded of how your jerky actions can ripple out and cause a vicious cycle like that. I feel like there’s a lot of ignorance on your part– not in terms of racism, but in terms of grasping that people are a product of both nature AND nurture.
In other words, if Sal and Walky were raised like Sierra instead of the way they were raised.
Does anyone beside me have trouble with the concept that Walky is doing “better” than Sal? That he’s even getting good grades? He has the emotional maturity of a four year old, his main point of reference is cartoons, he seems to be ignorant about a LOT of stuff. At least Sal seems to be living in the real world.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Walky for his childish, almost blissful ignorance, and yes, I have cartoons and other childish obsessions that I’ve never outgrown– but if I were their parent…yeah, Sal gets into a lot of trouble. Yet I think Sal has a much stronger hold on the “real world” and I’d worry a lot more about Walky, if I were their parent.
Also—I need to look back in the archives—are the parents’ preference for Walky even? Or does one favor Walky more than the other? That needn’t be broken up along racial lines–the African-American parent might favor Walky more, for instance, for numerous reasons….but I’d be interested.
Also, can’t see the tumblr thing from work, where I’m putting in some overtime, so I’ll check that out tonight.
I don’t really see that it’s that stark a difference between them anyway. Sal might have taken a detour five years ago, but now she’s right here at the same school as Walky. Struggling more in her classes, but that’s not exactly worth starting a federal case over. They’re on the same rung of the ladder climbing at the same pace right now, and if one of them’s climbing smoothly and the other’s fumbling about that’s pretty inconsequential in the scheme of things.
Yet one of them gets the “our little doctor in the making” talk and the other gets “I notice you’re not pretty anymore”. Newsflash, when the hospital’s looking to hire they’re not gonna care who did a committed a preteen crime or who made more stupid decisions in college. Hasn’t closed any doors for herself just yet, so it seems hyperbolic to say that she’s shitting all over the good life her parents tried to give her.
I was just thiinking the same thing about Walky. He even admitted himself that he didn’t have to work very hard to get top grades in high school, for instance. This might not translate too well to college. His people skills aren’t that great–he’s friendly, but says hurtful things without realizing it. He has some really odd ideas about things like what constitutes “manliness”. Even though he’s thin he’s not even in good physical shape–he didn’t like walking up the hills on campus, and his diet doesn’t seem too healthy. He seems like he was somewhat babied by his parents, at least his mom, so things were easier for him than for Sal. He just goes along with things because that’s his personality, so he didn’t have to try hard to keep from rebelling against his parents–he just had to be himself. He likes sedentary stuff, so he wasn’t as likely to go out and get into trouble, but he didn’t have to try to stay out of trouble, it’s just the way he was naturally. I kind of doubt he did much he didn’t want to except whatever minimal work he had to do to get through school, and having to dress up better than he wanted to on certain occasions or maybe keep his room cleaner than he wanted to. Everything else just came naturally to him.
So yeah, even though I like Walky, I wouldn’t exactly point him out as someone who is doing/living better than Sal is–his problems are just different than hers are, and he didn’t get in trouble with the law when he was 13. I think Sal probably realizes she did wrong then–how long should her parents hate her for that, anyway?
TA/Jason should be fired. PERIOD. RULE 1: no faculty/TA should have sex with a student in their class/section.
Excellent post, but I don’t think anyone is supposed to come out of this story looking faultless, nor is it really about blame. No matter how shitty you are to anyone, it’s pretty much impossible to give them justification to point a knife at a stranger and threaten murder for money. What Sal did was horrible.
Still, she paid for it with her childhood–under the absolute best of circumstances, in a private school rather than a prison, but she paid for it nevertheless–and she’s obviously trying to do better with her second chance. She’s not terribly good at it, as you point out, but there’s a whole lot of room for improvement over ‘unsuccessfully robbing convenience stores’. It’s understandable if you disagree, but in my opinion, Sal’s not a villain, just a spectacularly unwise young woman.
Back to Walky real quick. He’s living well, as you point out, and he’s right to feel good about himself compared to the mistakes his sister made. If he wants to wash his hands of her and walk away, that’s well within his rights. But it would be sad. It would be a waste. She’s the only sister he’s likely to ever have, after all, and loving family often means loving them despite their mistakes. His goal in this storyline is learning how.
That’s why this whole argument about whether the claims of racism are legit or not seems misguided to me. It doesn’t matter if all the hair subtext was literally a hallucination with no foundation in reality. The impression of racially-charged judgment is real to Sal, and that’s all that should matter to Walky. He’s not a stranger on the internet trying to validate Sal’s wikipedia links, he’s her brother.
Independent of their parents, Sal obviously has some serious issues with race. She identifies as the black one, but only in the most negative possible ways, all resentment and no celebration. Her robbery was the worst, most miserably hateful stereotype American white people have about black people, enacted as if it were performance art with the stuttering hesitation of a 13-year-old girl. Her punishment, on the other hand, was probably the kindest, gentlest, most expensive gift her white mother ever bought her. The hateful truth is that most black kids would be mercilessly tried as adults and imprisoned for such an offense. And now she finds herself in a self-sabotaging love-hate relationship with the whitest guy in the cast (no offense intended, Jason). I can’t hope to disentangle all that, so I don’t want to attempt to reach any conclusion other than that Sal has race issues, whether or not her parents do.
And you know what? Her parents probably have made some mistakes raising their kids. Women already have enough undeserved stress tied up in their appearance; I can easily see a little girl feeling horrible about being told to straighten her hair. This isn’t to say that insensitive comments about Sal’s hair justify burglary! Nothing does. But her parents should still endeavor to do better.
That’s the thing about this comic. There really aren’t any mustache-twirling villains, just a whole lot of people with different upbringings doing the best they can. They make mistakes, some more obvious than others, and prove the quality of their character in how they try to do better.
It’s Walky! Walky had a lot of plots that Willis could have translated to DoA, but I’m glad that he chose this one. Reconciling with an estranged loved one is hard for anyone, no matter the reasons, and usually in small, intensely personal ways. It’s perfect for a college-age drama.
tl;dr: it isn’t necessarily about agreeing with Sal, it’s about engaging with her and showing empathy. It’s about having the conversation, instead of storming off in outrage. Walky doesn’t owe Sal anything, but he owes himself that much.
Or, what he said.
I don’t see that we’re supposed to blame Walky or the parents for how they treat Sal. We have seen that Sal thinks she’s treated unfairly. We have seen that her family doesn’t care what she thinks, and refuses to discuss it with her. It’s hard to tell who’s wrong or right in this conflict when one side is silenced before it gets to speak, but I believe the point is Sal is feeling that no one wants to listen to her, no one wants to give her a chance and no one likes her for who she is. And right or wrong, she would probably like someone to at least try to see where she’s coming from.
@Corey: I get the feeling that you are projecting your own situation on the comic. You’re making assumptions about Sal’s past and the cause-and-effect of her parents treating her and Walky differently vs. Sal behaving badly, and it feels like you’re defending your own position rather than Walky’s. But no matter how similar your situations may be, you can’t know that they’re identical.
Although the comic itself doesn’t prove anything any which way, Willis has at the very least strongly implied that 1) Sal’s parents really did treat her less preferentially than Walky, since way before she started acting out, and 2) it was because they perceived her as more “black” than Walky.
This doesn’t excuse Sal’s bad behavior, and that was never even the issue. The issue is: would Sal’s parents have treated her and Walky like equals if she had lived her life any other way?
What I’d like to ask Sal is, besides the hair thing, what other examples can she give to prove her point? I’m sure there are plenty, but I have yet to hear from her about the specifics. We’ll probably see some of that next year.
Well, Walky, at least, identifies as whiter than Sal, as seen in the “She’s black, I’m generically Beige” comment. We’ve also seen that Billie, who basically grew up with them, kinda thinks Sal might have a point. And now there’s Walky, who, once nobody’s getting in his face about it, is seriously starting to consider the possibility.
Truth is, none of the evidence is conclusive, because internalized racism rarely displays itself in overt acts of clear prejudice. The main reason that the author himself has gone from letting us draw conclusions ourselves (like he has in other stories) to saying “Yes, this is a real thing, get over it” is largely because of people loudly complaining that Sal COULDN’T POSSIBLY be right, because her parents are a mixed marriage and people can’t be racist against their own kids.
Aw man the year is almost over, does that mean we aren’t going to get a strip a day because of the kickstarter goal anymore?
Also, it’s nice to see Billie and Walky share a tender moment, reminds both them and us that they do care for one another, even if she did use to be a cheerleader.
I asked about that a month or so ago, and Willis said that the Kickstarter goal was a strip a day for an entire year from whenever it started …. so after checking the calendar I see we will continue to get 7 strips a week until sometime in May 2014.
Not gonna lie, I was pretty ignorant about Sal and Walky and needed to have it spelled out to me. I love this strip.
Agh. Just realized my comment came off sarcastic. I truly do mean it.
1. I heart Billie. More and more.
2. I can’t believe how much ignorance “racial progress” has engendered. The fact that this society now believes that *noticing* or *talking* about race is racist (making it impossible to do anti-racist work, because how can you fight something you’re not supposed to be able to see?) is the mind-blowing result of decades of “colorblind” ideology.
Now kiss !
Alright, finally weighing in since the race issue.
Honestly, I was in the “we had no real proof” camp. I didn’t deny it, but I did feel like Willis had jumped the gun, telling us before showing us. It was obvious that Sal was the lesser liked child, but I didn’t see where race had been shown to be the factor in all of it. Then I saw Karkat’s tumblr post, which was a fantastic recap of everything that’s gone down. It made me think.
It’s been subtle. But no less subtle than Sal being the one to emotionally scar Amber and there were people crying that out before it actually happened. And I feel ashamed as a reader that I didn’t see this.
Is racism something real in me for not seeing this?
I don’t think so. I don’t think another person can call me a racist rightly for this, in the sense that racism is the dislike or hatred for one of any perceived race, or prejudice towards them.
I have my own personal hair problems, and so I never saw Sal hair problems being her race. I remember her dialogue being her southern accent from IW! and never questioned it. And I’ve never color-coded mannerism, so saying “Walky acts white” strikes me the wrong way. But there is one very clear example that should have clued me in to the others, and one that should have waved a flag early on.
The fact that I let Walky’s remark “My sister is black, but I’m generically beige” just roll off my back as joke is sickening in retrospect. My problem is the lack of sensitivity. Lack of gravity.
This comic arc is a good reminder that I’m not done working on myself. My own initial preconceptions from growing up in a very homogeneous environment are still there, even after they’ve been eliminated from the surface of my personality. And I think that’s what the intention for this story arc was.
And I owe you an apology Willis. I posted a comment earlier about reserving judgement. I didn’t read through the archives and do my homework, but instead posted something quickly, and added fuel to the fire. A list of comments like mine just allow every commenter to piggyback to assumptions, and without stopping to really think, and really consider, I became part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
And thank you to Karkat/Jen/Jon, whose tumblr post made a huge difference in the way I interpreted the comic. The post was very well thought out and made an impact on me.
I think there’s two kinds of ignorance. Those who don’t really know certain things simply because they were never told, either because society hasn’t talked about it enough or just, as luck would have it, they missed out on the info along the way. People can passively continue a bad thing because they don’t get the context.
And then there’s ignorance where you willfully base your judgments against things you already know, or should know. This is the “active” kind of racism where you probably know what’s sensitive and just don’t at all care.
There’s danger in both types, but I don’t think the first type is worthy of condemning a person. That’s why I decided to root through the archives and find what I could. Racism is very sensitive, and in some ways, I think putting such a heavy public stigma on it works against us. We make it out to be a humongous thing of cartoon villainy that we can’t point to the little things and talk about how that’s racist without needing to provide a lot of evidence. People act like you accused someone of murder, and it distracts everyone from getting to the real discussion. Not that I wanna say it should be okay, but whenever there’s a media scandal regarding racism I wish people would focus on WHY something is bad, not how much of a bad person they are.
If this is an eye-opening experience, take it out in the real world with you. Being aware of the deeper meanings behind your interactions is never a bad thing.
Chiming in to say thanks for that post. I also found it pretty insightful. Regarding two types of ignorance, though? I wouldn’t be so quick to construct a dichotomy outta that. All humans are in a constant state of trying to reconcile what they know with what they learn, and there’s many degrees of acceptance and rejection. Moreover, there’s matters of courtesy and intellectual integrity to consider. I’d much rather be the neighbor of someone who kindly and honestly rejects my perspective rather than someone who caustically berates me for not shouting our shared opinion loud enough.
Communication is even more complicated than that. While you might be having a conversation about race, many people ostensibly involved are simply signalling allegiance to their chosen social groups by repeating blanket arguments or counter-arguments. On top of a broad spectrum of acceptance/rejection, on top of matters of courtesy, on top of matters of emotional context, there’s differing degrees of recitation versus engagement!
It’s complicated, and it is an ill impulse that leads people to break down complicated judgments into a false dichotomy of good vs. bad, us vs. them. Really, when that happens, most of the time it’s just someone remembering their own experiences and identifying that as sympathetic, then grouping all other experiences together and identifying that as unsympathetic.
I suppose it’s better to say there’s a healthy and unhealthy way to approach ignorance instead, then, because I do actually agree with the fact that bad things happen if you lump people in good vs bad. I meant all that in more of a way where there’s a forgivable level of not knowing what an issue is, but I suppose I focused on dividing a line between the two too much.
To that end the heavy public stigma against racism DOES distract from the real issue, and we focus on the person rather than why what they did was wrong. Just like it’s easy for Sal’s parents to blame her shortcomings on perceived racial identity, it’s easy for us to say all racists are monsters. Just like there’s a side that needs to be educated, there’s also a side that needs to heal and let go for a better future.
I’m all for love, peace, and education myself.
In my experience, calling anyone a monster for any reason is usually a selfish action. You can score cheap points reaffirming your own identity that way (that isn’t me!) or your membership in some social group (see how open-minded and progressive I am, I’m nothing like that guy!), but it does very little to actually change anyone’s mind.
Instead, engage in conversation. I don’t really care for the term ‘ignorant’ when it comes to racism; it seems… imprecise. Racism is a form of knowledge (X-skinned people are Y) that just happens to be incorrect. Consider that the problem may not be that people haven’t been taught the correct things, it may be that they haven’t really critically examined the incorrect things they have been taught. That suggests three forms of existent racism, examined and accepted racism, unexamined racism, and willfully unexamined racism.
It is easy to immediately leap to the conclusion that the first and third should be scorned while the second should be accepted as a target for education, but there are circumstances in which all three are understandable. There are those who have suffered by the actions of members of a race that already hates them. I won’t gainsay their reciprocal prejudices, only caution against a circle of reprisal. There are those who live good and useful lives, who spend their time and their compassion on issues other than racial equality and would rather not even think about it. I find that distasteful, but I’d rather comment on a webcomic than argue with them about it (and I know where quite a few of them live.)
Within the cultural context of this comic’s audience, neither is terribly likely, but removing the absolutes from the conversation invites those with racial prejudices to explain why they think what they do.
I too was in the “Sal is making a mountain out a molehill” crowd, but Willis has been pretty clear about saying Sal is right and Walky is wrong behind the scenes, so whatevs. I suppose now we just wait to see what Willis’ solution to this is!
Re: the “Sal is overreacting” camp.
I don’t know about you, but the fact that her mother essentially ignored her during her entire appearance would have been enough for me. If we extrapolate that to the majority of Sal’s life…
I’m not really sure how to put this into words. Have you ever been ignored by a parent? It is ABSOLUTELY SOUL-CRUSHING. I know, I spent the majority of my life utterly persona-non-grata to my father. Since I loathed NASCAR, hated country music, never would touch flannel, wasn’t good at fixing cars and didn’t orgasm over the latest auto show, I might as well not have existed. Hell, I had it EASIER than Sal, as my parents were parted before my birth, but living each and every day with a parent who completely disregards her existence because she isn’t EXACTLY what she wanted?
I’m surprised the worse she did was rob a store!
The problem is, we can’t extrapolate that to the majority of Sal’s life. Even accepting that there was some racial bias, you’re asking us to assume that their attitude towards Sal did not even get a little bit worse after the robberies. It’s obvious that it got worse, the question is just where it started.
I often check the comments, but by the time I get to them, there are just too many for me to read in my morning routine, so I skim down, looking for the ones that Mr. Willis comments on.
I was starting to think Mr. Willis was under a great deal of stress, or going through some personal crisis, since the tone of his posts seemed more and more strident.
Looking now at the things that he’s having to read and go through, I actually think he’s handling it all very well.
It’s a sign of his artistry and ability as a storyteller that he’s able to get so many people worked up, discussing tough topics so passionately. Keep up the good work, Mr. Willis! Thanks for this comic.
I would just like to say, before the idiots get the comments shut down again, that I personally was ignorant to the issue of hair straightening as a black/white thing, and while I would never go so far as to say hat mixed race couples can’t be racist or that people can’t be racist against their own children, I was one of those people who, at the time, thought that maybe his comment on her hair was just poorly phrased or there was some context that made it better than it sounded. (I may have been a bit desperate to see a parent that wasn’t horrible by that point in the story-line.)
But people in the comments section straightened me out (ha.) and gave me the historical and cultural perspective I lacked as a sheltered white dude, and it -changed my mind-. Because if you give a crap about what’s true, rather than what you -want- to be true, you have to be willing to do that.
So, for my part at the very least, to David Willis:
This storyline taught me something, and thanks for that.
Here here.
Or is it Hear Hear? Either way.
Hear here? ;p
Or Here hear.:)
I don’t know what’s amazing me more.
Is it the fact that we actually had to improve to reach this level of conversation about race?
Is it the comments that seem to argue that the writer is mistaken about what has happened to his own characters?
Is it my admiration of the author for putting up with the flood of patronizing corrections?
I can’t really tell.
I haven’t read all the comments, so sorry if someone has already said this, but I like how it’s Billie who’s teaching Walky here. In other stories, you’d have some wise, older guy, probably black, teaching Walky about hidden racism. And this man–oh yeah, it’d most likely be a man–would be some wise figure who never makes mistakes, never has his own story, is just there to dispense advice. But the fact is, sometimes we get good advice from unexpected places. Sometimes someone who is stupid about some things may be smart about others. And vice-versa. So here we have a stuck-up, snobby cheerleader who’s a little too obsessed with social status giving advice to an immature young man who’s probably a lot smarter than her in a lot of ways. And while she doesn’t give the advice in that perfect, sage way that the old cliche might have, she gives the advice in a way that Walky can hear. It’s very real. And it’s much more interesting. Especially in how it gives insight into Billie’s character, and how she’s starting to mature a little.
tl;dr Kudos, Willis, for not only tackling a difficult issue, but doing so in a way that is interesting, realistic, and an example of excellent storytelling.
Why castigate Walky for self-identifying as beige instead of black? When your background is from multiple sources, or whatever, it’s no shame to self identify as “everything”. That’s owning who you are. I’m me, I’m everything, and I refuse to wear your labels and self identify as one particular subsection of who I am. If you can’t handle that I’m everything, that I’m mixed, that I like being a bit of everything and aren’t going to limit my identity like that, then you’re the racist one, not me.
It’s not that he self-identifies as “generically beige”, but that he identifies his sister as black in the same sentence.
It also was not, as far as I’ve seen, an admonition from anybody, it was just given as evidence that Walky self-identifies as “whiter than Sal”.
In the case of Walky identifying as biege, what I find interesting/telling is that he has labeled himself biege and his **twin sister** as black. Even though they are fraternal twins and not identical twins, for him to self-identify one way and identify his twin as something else seems really odd to me. My sister and I are both Asian/Caucasian, and we don’t say one of us is yellow and the other a pale cream, or something like that.
But… Fraternal twins happen when two eggs are fertilized at the same time whereas identical twins come from the same egg that decided to split itself in half. Wouldn’t the different be that even though they were born at the same time, there’s a possibility that their ratios aren’t the same?
It’s not about ratio, and that’s not how it works.
He is describing two people – full siblings – as being different races.
I did kind of word that poorly, didn’t I? I meant gene ratio. All ovum and all spermatozoa do not carry the same DNA sequences, so I was bringing to light the possibility of one having genes that take after one parent more than the other, vice versa, and everywhere in between.
What I’m trying to say is that there is a possibility that for Sal her father’s genes shine forth more than her mother’s and that for Dave to have some sort of balance from both.
Ah, All Else Fails, I get what your saying now. I’m not sure that I agree, but I believe I now see the point you’re making.
Crap. “You’re” not “your”
Yes, Kladeos got my point. As I stated in my comment, my sister and I (and we are NOT twins but are full siblings) have never stated that we are different races. And even though they are fraternal twins and not identical, people often perceive twins of any stripe as more similar than other types of siblings.
Plus, I’m not sure how there would be any difference in “ratios” when it comes to siblings and genetics. You get half of your chromosomes from your dad and half from your mom. You perhaps *could* make an argument that if the parents themselves were mixed race, the make-up of each sperm or egg would have variable race ratios (not that you probably should, but you could), but in the Walkerton’s case, the parents are not mixed race, so you can’t convincingly make the argument. (At least so far as my understanding of genetics and biology is concerned. Please, enlighten me otherwise if I am incorrect).
It was very surprising for me to find out that my sister identifies as Black.
I never really considered my racial identity growing up. Mostly felt that I should just be able to be Canadian like everybody else, because Jesus Christ it’s been nine generations, longer than most of these white fuckers trying to tell me I’ve got a heritage. My sister must’ve been 12 or something when I found out that she was identifying as Black, and it had apparently been going on for quite some time before I ever heard about it.
Can’t say I understand it, but I respect it. Figure it’s not my place to argue with her about that part of herself. Mom does a little bit. Does the “Well, mostly you’re white. Three quarters of your background is white.” Seems a bit condescending and disrespectful though. Let’s not talk like she doesn’t know what she is.
What’s especially interesting is I’m pretty sure Dad doesn’t even identify as black all that strongly. He apparently had a phase in highschool where he called himself “Clear”, though he talks about it today in a “I was such a douche” kind of way. He was taken to some predominately black churches at various points growing up and apparently their take on it was that if you’ve got any black in you, you’re completely black. Seems like there are multiple schools of thought on the subject. All I know is I always hated it when people would try and push that sort of stuff on me, so Sister’s probably got enough of that going on without me chipping in telling her she’s not black enough to be black. Plus it’s been enough years now that this pretty definitely isn’t just some phase she’s going through.
Brother came out full-blown British White with blond hair and blue eyes. Sunlight burns him like nobody’s business. Never heard him refer to himself as any race, but darned if people haven’t said it for him. What was always weird was the people who would say we looked nothing alike. We looked like pallet swaps of eachother when we were younger, though we’ve sort of grown in different directions as we got older. At one point in highschool I dyed my hair blond and people were mistaking me for him at every turn.
So that could tie into the ratios talk. My brother could never appear anything but British, I can pass for one of those darker european whites so long as I don’t get much sunlight, Sister looks pretty middle-eastern, though Sister and I were born with the same skin tone.
Perhaps, despite being twins, they nonetheless have different ideologies, different outlooks on life, different ways of responding to the same stimulus, and otherwise are different people. Why do I have to self identify as the exact same race or mix of races that my siblings self identify as? Perhaps we each have chosen to emphasize or otherwise embrace different aspects of our racial heritage.
At the time, I assumed that that was Sal’s self-identification and that he was just respecting her identity, rather than it being a label he was putting on her. Remember, this was before we knew anything about their parents.
It might be. I’m inclined to believe Walky doesn’t actually know that much about Sal’s thoughts on anything though, since they haven’t really been speaking to eachother in the last five years.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume you’re the one who sent me that ask on tumblr.
No one is criticizing Walky for his identity (at least I hope not). They’re criticizing -why- he might’ve chosen his identity. Just because you do it for the right reasons doesn’t mean someone’s gonna make the same conclusions for the right reasons, either.
Off-Topic:
AHH! ALL I SEE ARE GIANT WALLS OF TEXTS! You know, I think some of you could be writers, too. Most likely non-fictional writers, but writers nonetheless.
On-Topic:
You’re wrong, Billie. I didn’t laugh, so either that wasn’t a joke or that was a piss-poor joke.
At some point, the raw number of words people have typed about Willis strips surpassed the number of words he’s typed about Transformers. I wonder when that was.
great page
thank god
You thought he was dead.
All these posts are TL:DR, so apologies if I am repeating someone… but I can’t remember another time where walky and billie were actually demonstrating that they actually have a genuine emotional connection; most of the time they bicker like an old married couple (which also implies a genuine emotional connection, but not in a good way). Its billie’s smile that sells it for me… good work.
Billie was set on setting up Walky with Dorothy. That was kinda cute.
She also mentioned that she’s considers Walky’s parents her parents to a greater extent than the people who actually birthed her. Think they bicker less like an old married couple and more like some siblings do.
Nevermind. Just looked up the link. What she said wasn’t quite as severe as what I just said.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/familyyy/
She just sometimes calls Walky’s parents Mom and Dad. Still, the sibling thing is there. Walky’s also refereed to their “Shallowly-Buried affection and lust, held at bay by Flimsily-Constructed social barriers, masqueradin’ as sibling-like rivalry” in jest recently.
*steps away from the comment section*
To those that actually have a clue, I’m cheering for you from the sidelines. I don’t have the spoons and/or fucks to deal with the ignorance.
I have been really, super enjoying all of Dumbing of Age, but the recent arc between Sal and Walky has surpassed all expectations I have ever had for a webcomic. I absolutely LOVE that we are getting to see a narrative that isn’t just the same old thing. And for what it’s worth, I saw evidence for the Walkerton parents’ racism before Sal ever said a word about it (and was then SO HAPPY when she brought it up). To be fair, I’m also probably older than most of your readers, so I’ve had time to be exposed to the context presented here.
Anyway. Thanks for writing such a compelling story. I was really skeptical about Dumbing of Age when you first started it (what more could be said about these characters???), but boy did you prove me wrong. I think DoA has said more about real life than just about any story — webcomic or otherwise — I’ve read in a long time.
Holy crap! It suddenly occurred to me that I have gone several dozen strips without hating Billie! Did we jump to yet another parallel universe where she isn’t a total bongo??
Billie isn’t a “total bongo.” She’s an abrasive person, but underneath it she’s as easily hurt as anyone else, she has good intentions. She drops the whole cheerleader persona when people actually need help.
Billie still feels miles away from the girl who dismissed Walky on the first day and had serious aversions to “nerds” for a long time after that. I think she has evolved thanks to Ruth and other circumstances like Joyce getting attacked.
I’d just like to say that Willis did a great job with Billie’s art today.
This, this I like. Walky showing some progress and trying to deal with a troubling issue while staying true to the kind of person he is. And though Im still of the opinion Sal is atleast mostly to blame for her treatment, I’d actually like to see an answer to his question as well and see just how much of their parents actions were to blame and if it was racialy driven. I’m really curious to see where Willis is going with this story.
Billie gets more and more adorable every strip.