X-Men and Civil Rights

[lisaquestions]

So I was thinking, earlier

Comments

[lisaquestions]

Like out of the blue?

I'll totally tell him you sent me.

[lisaquestions]

Ha! Done. :)

[ex_drakyn]

Hmm, warning you: I've only read some comics of the various xmen series, as well as the recent movies, and the xmen: evolution cartoons.

One possible reason is Xavier's idealism; Showing humans that not all mutants are evil and some will even fight for you instead of against you is sure to win some points. Even though it doesn't change the view of mutants as fighters/killers. *rolls eyes*
One would also hope there was less dramatic, more useful activism going on behind the scenes of the comics; but then again, if it isn't shown in the source it isn't strictly canon.

And of course, Erik decided that the best defense is a good offense.

[lisaquestions]

Right, but I can't help but think there were more forces at work than just "Erik's so pissed off at the Shoah that he wants revenge for that and preemptive strikes to save mutantkind from the same."

And also, yes, the entire point of Xavier's X-Men was showing that not all mutants were bad and some would fight to defend humanity - although this was hardly ever portrayed as effective. Once the X-Men defeated an enemy, they'd get verbal abuse until they went away. And of course the abusers were safe because the X-Men were fundamentally the good guys, and even threatening them would be inflated into more anti-mutant sentiment.

And yeah, I didn't mention it in my post, but the vast majority of mutants are closeted. It's considered unusual that Warren Worthington III is out in the open as a mutant, and he's largely shielded by his rich white maleness, and you see very little actual activism, lobbying, and the like.

[homo_impetus]

Warren is the bucks behind the scenes. He does his activism with his checkbook like all high powered white dudes who don't believe in being the face of a movement but the force in the shadows.

[lisaquestions]

That's totally reasonable, and I think it's something he would do. I can't remember if he ever actually did it?

I'm also thinking of stuff like how Shaw Industries supplied Project: Wideawake with sentinels and just what the Hellfire Club did or whether they cared about civil rights, or just preferred the closet.

Also: Would mutants try to out closeted prominent mutants to increase visibility? Or is being a mutant so dangerous that it'd be a really awful thing to do?

[homo_impetus]

Mutants do have something like a Stonewall. Only they have it over and over again....
They have various rebellions and massacres and M-day.
Professor X actually is not intending to train anyone to fight other mutants per se but more training mutants to help humans and keep themselves safe.
Eric/Mageneto was originally training "evil mutants" in order to take over as Homo Superior. To enslave all non-mutants essentially. A sort of mutant manifest destiny if you will.
Grant Morrison does a really great job of showcasing that in his run on New X-men.

There is infighting within any political movement.
Magneto is/was the Malcolm X figure originally (of course prior to Malcolm turnabout in regards to violence later in his life) and Professor X was MLK.

I think comics had as much social/political relevance as they could during that time. I think many of the comic plots mirror that of SciFi during the same time period on shows like The Outer Limits for example

[lisaquestions]

Hmm - they have violent events, with the rebellions, massacres, M-Days and so on, but I'm thinking of a single defining moment where they stand up and say "no more" and do their best to make it stick

[homo_impetus]

You can look at any alternate reality available so far to decide what it would look like.
M-day brought us what the world would look like if Mags won.
Age of Apocalypse brought us what it would look like if he had won.
Grant Morrison's future visions in New X-Men or the mini-series X-Men:The End give us yet another story.

Any Exiles arc has some interesting tidbit in it of the possibilities.

Although honestly the issue that I mention of the X-factor Layla Miller special is one of the first times I have seen things put together so well.
I love Layla though, so I could just be biased.

[lisaquestions]

I don't mean the outcome, I'm fascinated by the story ideas that come from showing the process.

I also wonder about characters who have seen the future (Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers) in Days of Future Past, and how much energy they'd put into preventing that, spreading the word about it so people know that "things are going to hell and we need to do something about it" and what that would mean.

And yes, it seems far-fetched, but hey, telepaths nearly everywhere might help with the convincing.

And yes, The End was one of the reasons I started thinking about this stuff. I haven't read Grant Morrison's future X-Men materials, though.

PS

[homo_impetus]

trans_comicgeek

Mostly dead comm, but I believe in promotion whenever possible.

[squigglefish]

homo_impetus has made some wonderful comments, so I won't attempt to badly repeat any of them :P

[lisaquestions]

Yeah, I agree with all of that. I knew when I started (and tried to say so in the post) that this wasn't something the comic books could cover. I just started thinking about these things:

* The X-Men started during the black civil rights movement.

* The X-Men comics, as written during that time, don't really betray a strong sense of what the civil rights movement was like.

* One of the clashing elements is how Xavier's mutants spent most of their energy fighting Magneto's mutants.

* Humans benefit from this struggle. Are humans actually goading it along?

And that's really what I started the thread to talk about: Was there a mutant civil rights movement? What did it look like? How did they deal with all the grandstanding from Prof X and Magneto? How did they deal with the fact that just revealing themselves in some places would attract an immediate lynch mob? Would that even fly for very long? What if there was a mutant Bayard Rustin in the black civil rights movement? Looking at the events that happened during the black movement

[lilairen]

Not comics but sort of comics-universe-like, have you ever read any of the Wild Cards series? The parallelism of the mutant civil rights stuff there with the real-world civil rights movement is Not Subtle, but it was interesting to me when I read it.

[lisaquestions]

I have! There's some good stuff in there, especially early on. It gets out of hand in later books, though.

I've heard the new stuff is pretty good, and the comic (at least what I've read so far) is good.