I was just reading a random DCU/Buffy crossover last night where Clark and Lois were noticing that Sunnydale's demographics did not exactly match real-world southern California's demographics... there's a family of original characters in the story that happens to be Hispanic, and one of them literally says "oh yeah, Sunnydale, where all the stupid white people live. We're not dumb enough to go THERE after dark."
Which is, I guess, a better explanation (for why there aren't any non-white people in Sunnydale) than NO explanation at all, but... exactly what you said.
Really, though, I get the same feeling from this as I did about a particular episode of this one tv show where a male character was emotionally cruel to a female character in what was supposed to be a romantic scene, but it just came off as sexist-- yeah, there *were* explanations I could make up in my head that would have made the characters' actions more understandable, and just a little imaginary backstory made it way more sympathetic, but... I don't really *feel* like making excuses for crappy sexist writing. It feels wrong. Why should I make excuses for someone who slaps me in the face?
I feel a little bit the same way about tv shows (especially non-SF/fantasy shows) that depict real places and can't even bother to get the *background* demographics right, let alone have any representation among the main ensemble of characters. I could make excuses, I just don't really want to.
I'm trying to think now whether I've heard actual people of color use this argument or whether I've only heard it from the fictional variety. I am alarmed but, sadly, not all that surprised that I'm not sure.
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I was just reading a random DCU/Buffy crossover last night where Clark and Lois were noticing that Sunnydale's demographics did not exactly match real-world southern California's demographics... there's a family of original characters in the story that happens to be Hispanic, and one of them literally says "oh yeah, Sunnydale, where all the stupid white people live. We're not dumb enough to go THERE after dark."
Which is, I guess, a better explanation (for why there aren't any non-white people in Sunnydale) than NO explanation at all, but... exactly what you said.
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HA!
Really, though, I get the same feeling from this as I did about a particular episode of this one tv show where a male character was emotionally cruel to a female character in what was supposed to be a romantic scene, but it just came off as sexist-- yeah, there *were* explanations I could make up in my head that would have made the characters' actions more understandable, and just a little imaginary backstory made it way more sympathetic, but... I don't really *feel* like making excuses for crappy sexist writing. It feels wrong. Why should I make excuses for someone who slaps me in the face?
I feel a little bit the same way about tv shows (especially non-SF/fantasy shows) that depict real places and can't even bother to get the *background* demographics right, let alone have any representation among the main ensemble of characters. I could make excuses, I just don't really want to.
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