I’ve read the criticisms done to Faunus and the White Fang: The Portrayal of Racism and I think it’s time to address them.
Again, I am white and do not claim to speak for POC or that my knowledge of racism is amazing (it isn’t). I am also not continuing this conversation to criticize RWBY for the sake of it. I just really don’t like the idea that the people talking about this are edgelords whose stance of racism nowadays is “it doesn’t exist and POC are just whiny”.
First, I’m going to address the end of my post: Trump. I claimed that the election of Trump proved racism is alive and well and some took it as “people voted for Trump because of racism”. I see how one could interpret it that way, but that’s not what I meant. I meant that all the xenophobic and racist rhetoric didn’t stop Trump from being elected – it wasn’t a deal-breaker. And no, the other options, either Bernie or Clinton weren’t worse or even as bad.
RWBY doesn’t show racism as something done by individuals but as systemic because… Atlas
For the most part, it doesn’t show it as systemic. I claimed Atlas was the exception in my original post and even extended Mistral with the sign prohibiting Faunus, which reveals there are no anti-discrimination laws there. However, I maintain that’s not enough, especially considering there are 6 volumes.
It seems that Atlas will explore the systemic racism more, considering the first 3 episodes (especially the third) and that’s good, but shouldn’t we have had something more before? What about all the other kingdoms? From the conversation of Ozpin and Blake, it seemed like racism is supposed to be a widespread thing, but it’s not if Atlas is the only offender or even if Mistral also is. I think we should have had more of an exploration of the subject in Mistral, considering its history and its lack of anti-discrimination laws.
Even Vale should have been shown more. We had an anti-racist group willing to destroy the city (and die in the process) – there should be a justification for that besides “there are some racists here”. It’s one thing for a few members to become extreme, quite another for an entire not-so-small group to do so. Not only the WF seems to be a large organization, it also seems to be the most relevant. Yet they decided to attack Vale, the city where racism only exists in a few specific individuals (who tend to be jerks), because…
OK, to be fair, the individual racists are allowed to be with no consequences. For example, Cardin’s bullying of others and specifically of Faunus as he attacked Velvet via her Faunus trait, did not face any consequences for his actions. This shows that more than a few people are very much willing to let others attack minorities, so they’re complicit. This been said, I wish we had been shown a lot more. As it is, it just feels hard to believe so many would be OK with both killing and dying for their cause.
Qrow wasn’t justifying racism, he was just explaining it
He still frames it as understandable and rational in some way with “it’s not too hard to sympathize with that”. It’s still “yikes”.
Blake’s speech was wrong, but it’s just meant to be a call to action
A call to action that claims that if they don’t risk their lives to save people who will gladly exploit or injure them or even kill them, then they will prove the bigots right. Sorry but that speech is completely indefensible.
I would also like to add that Ghira’s stance of “no violence no matter what” is absurd and it does send a message to the minorities, whether CRWBY intended it or not: don’t fight back ever, not even when someone is threatening you. A stance that CRWBY seems to be changing with Weiss defending Blake at the beginning of V7, but it wasn’t there until then. Also, what does it say for Weiss, someone who is not a Faunus and actually benefitted a lot from the exploitation of said group, is the one who is allowed to use violence to defend Faunus, while Faunus themselves can’t? That puts Faunus very dependent on white saviors. I get this is part of her arc and showing she’s not the same as she was in V1, still… just saying it risks doing that, even if I hope for the best (which I do).
Racists are people too
“I think the writers were going for ‘racists are people too’, which is a troublesome stance to take when you frame the ones fighting racism as flat out evil.”
I can see how this can be interpreted as me having a problem with the portrayal of racists as anything but monsters, so I’ll make it clearer: I do not think that “racists are people too” is problematic in itself, quite the opposite: I think when dealing with racism, we could benefit from showing people who are altogether nice, yet still willing to hold on to their privilege (like say… by voting for a racist candidate). I think it would be great to show racism in a way that is not completely blatant and that would challenge the audience to question their own behaviors. However, I do think that “racists are people too” is an awful stance when you show anti-racists to be completely irredeemable terrorists. The problem here is the extension of sympathy to the racists while showing almost none to the ones fighting it.
White Fang is a cautionary tale for what can happen to social justice groups/movements
It can, but it’s not often. Either it’s a relatively small group of radicals or it’s radical members in a very large group in which the majority is not radical. Sometimes, these are made to appear to be worse than they are because the media focuses on their violent actions while ignoring everything else. Sometimes, the media misleads us by ignoring who really started said altercations (though the responses often can be disproportionate).
“Remnant can’t be racist, because…”
Last time, I counter-argued some points I have seen around defending that Remnant can’ be racist. Someone countered mine when it comes to Leo and the townspeople.
Leo
“in V3 we are shown that headmasters (Ozpin included) are under the council. So while Oz might have chosen Leo, Mistral’s council could have booted him instantly”
OK, but how do we know the people in the council aren’t progressive? I mean Mistral still allows for discrimination, but for all we know, the council is deeply conflicted and Leo might have had just enough support to not get booted.
Also, not all racism is overt. For someone to actively refuse someone on the basis of race, they don’t have to be just racist, they have to be racist, proud of it and not even slightly interested in pretending they’re not. Most racists aren’t like that. I don’t think putting a Faunus as Haven’s headmaster was the best idea, but the argument “a kingdom can’t be racist because it has one Faunus in an important position” is just flat-out wrong. Again, the USA had a black president. The Republican Party has black politicians.
Townspeople
“i really hate how people think this is defending racism. Please, remember the context of what happens. The white fang in Adams short are with an uniform and MASKS, masks that ONLY appear AFTER the first terrorist act commited by ADAM who starts the entire concept. The soldiers having masks already marks them as a terrorist organization by that point, because despite Ghiras leadership, we can see Adam under him, commiting criminal acts. I think that they really dropped the ball on that short with the visuals they employed.”
And I really hate how people think blocking someone’s path and shouting is worse than trying to shoot people1.
No, you cannot start shooting people just because you find them suspicious, not even when the reason why you think they’re suspicious is that they are wearing masks! I can’t believe I have to repeat this.
Masks=terrorism is one hell of an assumption, even if they were started to be used after Adam’s first act of terrorism. For all we know, WF members thought the whole “we are monsters, so we’ll wear masks” was a good idea, so they adhered to it even if they disagreed with Adam’s methods. They were with Ghira and not fighting back at all, despite having weapons. They could have dropped their weapons, sure, but they were still not using them and they would have been completely justified in doing so – it would have been self-defense. It is particularly strange that the person who defended the townspeople action for attacking masked WF members also threw a tantrum over Antifa because some members harassed elderly people for thinking they were racists. Which one is it: is it wrong to attack someone because of what we think they are or not? Why is blocking a path and screaming awful, yet SHOOTING isn’t? Weird…
1 This should not be seen as an endorsement of Antifa’s actions in that situation.
Nerd Side of the Media 