Racism: America’s original intrinsic field subtractor
Forging black superheroes since 1619
by Dr. Whitney V. Cabey, MD, MSHP, Pincus Family Foundation Pediatric Urban Health Fellow
The last time I wrote for our Medium blog I was extolling the virtues of Barry as an exemplary show about trauma in a decade full of exciting, interesting takes on the topic. I closed with the standard plea for more racial and ethnic diversity in trauma narratives, to help foster understanding of experiences that are far from our own. It seemed like a theme I could return to in a few years and see how much (or little) progress we’ve made.
And then Watchmen happened.
I’m not exactly sure where to start in terms of a basic recap. At the most cursory level, this is simultaneously an update, an extension, a re-imagination and an indictment of the original 1986 Watchmen comic book. It occupies a rarified space for comic book fans as one of the genre’s best attempts to interrogate the very idea of a comic hero while asking larger questions about the major societal questions of the era. Watchmen, the television show, pushes the interrogation further by asking the central question, to both the original comic and lovers of the genre writ large, “Did you think about African Americans?” It then goes on to answer its own question, demonstrating painstakingly and devastatingly how the narrative of the enslaved African in America, born out of racist terrorism, is the greatest superhero origin story never told.
It’s a captivating thesis but, I have to be honest, in selling the argument things get weird. There is an intergalactic squid bomb. A blue demi-god hiding in the body of an African American man. A lake full of baby clones. Both the law and the lawless wear masks to hide their faces and their fears. Anchoring it all is Regina King, giving the performance of her life, selling you on the emotion just when the plot is careening straight towards WTF-ville. You may just have to trust me (and most major television critics) when I say that you can and will make sense of all of that crazy in just eight episodes. In terms of a one-season-and-done television experience, it will not disappoint.
More importantly, 48 hours later, the crazy stuff and the amazing soundtrack and the tight plotting have faded pleasantly to the background. What remains is that thesis: black trauma is the American superhero origin story. It remains, refusing to be whitewashed, demanding to be wrestled with, interrogated and contextualized. I thought it would be interesting to do so with an urban bioethical lens. I argued in the last piece that fictional trauma narratives can bridge divides and open dialogues, speaking truths and challenging norms that are sometimes too difficult to articulate in real life. Watchmen grants us an opportunity, between the “what just happened??” moments, to explore the bioethical implications of a very difficult narrative, one that ties our national obsession with super heroism to the root of one of our foundational American traumas: slavery.
Comic book tales have always been rooted in trauma. Superman traveled to Earth in a tiny spaceship, rocketed by parents who could only hope for his salvation as their world literally imploded around them. Batman witnessed his parents murder on the gritty streets of Gotham. The mutants in the X-Men universe share a common history of persecution, disenfranchisement and loss of bodily integrity to experimentation and weaponization. Outcasts, orphans, others; superheroes know a thing or two about adverse childhood experiences, toxic stress, and intergenerational trauma.
So, unfortunately, do African Americans. How many black baby Supermen were separated from family and ferreted to safety on the Underground Railroad or during the Great Migration? Due to the disproportionate impact of gun violence in black communities, how many young Batmen exist; angry, afraid and ready to go to extremes to prevent further physical and emotional loss? The relationship of African ancestry to science can certainly be analogized to mutation; centuries of pseudoscience have been dedicated to proving a scientific basis for our perceived and monetized differences. In the process we have been experimented upon and violated. Dangerous misconceptions of our perceptions of pain, our capacity to learn, our basic ability to draw breath, are still entrenched in the biomedical sciences.
Watchmen made it clear from the opening frame that the next two months would be spent making sure as many people as possible understood these connections. In a show full of fantastical elements, the opening scene was completely grounded in historical accuracy. It vividly depicts the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre and destruction of the black neighborhood of Greenwood. Focusing on the experience of one young boy who escapes, intentional parallels are drawn between his experience and Superman’s flight from Krypton. The comparisons are repeated and intentionally heavy handed, turning a well underlined message into an indictment. Summer after summer we pay money at the box office to celebrate superheroes beating the bad guys, but few in this country celebrate the narrative of the enslaved. Even fewer believe we should pay money to the descendants of real life heroes and survivors who continue to battle the odds and the racists.
Any great work can be critiqued. This version of Watchmen, with so much on its mind and its plate, had difficulty articulating the connections between the American manifestation of white supremacy and it’s equally corrosive counterpart, colonization. This is a shame because intersectionality is to social justice what the Avengers is to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The stories of Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, Aboriginal people and Southeast Asians in their fight for sovereignty and equality are just as superheroic. I hope to see more in the future. The story also had less to say about sexual minorities than I wanted, although what it did have time for was important and well rendered.
At the Center for Urban Bioethics, we spend a lot of time talking, teaching and thinking about embodiment. A body is more than a collection of cells, it is the convergence of personal, family and community narratives. If the personal is political, then the body is cultural. We argue for an embodied ethics where bodies-in-action-in-context inform our ideas about equity, autonomy, agency, justice, and beneficence. Watchmen feels like a pop culture, crazytown version of our conversations about how the lived experience of race and racism change our understanding and interpretation of the normative “truths” of biomedicine. We work hard to center the marginalized in a way that affirms both the historical truth of the marginalization and the heroism of existence the face of structural violence. Take a look. Watchmen may be over, but the work is just beginning.
Dr. Cabey is a health services researcher and emergency physician specializing in pediatric emergency medicine. She is a current Pincus Family Foundation fellow in Pediatric Urban Health earning her MA Urban Bioethics at the CBUHP. Her work focuses on trauma and intergenerational health.
