^
Thanks for the reply. I'll start with Obama. I found the speech, the first clip I am posting, and Obama's b.s. starts around 1:50, where he encourages one of his daughters to put herself in the shoes of slaves
and slavers. But to be fair, I also put in a clip of an Obama speech that sounds more in line with what you suggested he discussed. And I see this as part of who Obama is, a divided man in some respects who has had to do that for his whole life. However I don't think its conducive to all black people to do that. Yes, we have to learn how to navigate in a white dominated country and world, but not to actually take on and empathize with slavers or oppressors? Obama does compare the slave forts/slavery to the Jewish Holocaust, but we know that Obama would never link the Nazis and Jewish Holocaust victims the same way he did in Ghana. He would not say that he teaches Sasha or Malia to also think of the Nazi death camp guards who
thought they were doing right or that loved their children.
With Priest, I agree with you that he was contending with how to grapple with how to get white readership/support for black books, particularly Black Panther. But I disagree that there a ton of were anti-white or white bashing comic books with black characters. I mean you might have had the awkward special issue dealing with race, but a majority of black-fronted books at that time and before were written by white males. So I think the perception, pertaining to comics was exaggerated and illogical, though with white racial anxiety logic is not going to factor much into it anyway. So do you think that this fear of criticism is what keeps whites away from black comics today? I think that's an excuse to mask that white readers aren't that interested, in the whole, for black characters headlining books and never have been. There's an empathy gap and that's present throughout most media. I mean there are the handful of black actors, comedians, and now television producers, that do break through, but its always a handful and they generally are not challenging or criticizing white people, unless very carefully. That being said, I would argue that most comics with black characters, even back in the day, didn't really challenge or criticize white people either.
It brings to mind a scene with Ron Troupe (DC Comics) where he is tearing into his own sister to defend Perry White. His sister is part of protests to get more diversity at the Daily Planet and Troupe lights into her, using White's previous support of civil rights to defend him. It felt so inauthentic and a white person's idea of what a black person should say, but still this is the kind of stuff we've had when it comes to dealing with race in mainstream comics, all too often than not. White people's ideas of what black people are or can be. Granted with Priest, there might have been extra suspicion or anxiety because he was black and he felt a need to mollify whites and convince them that he was no threat, he would not upset them. I get it, but its still sad, and upsetting.
Priest is a comic veteran and he was pragmatically looking at his business and wondering, how do I get more white readers. What I liked about Hudlin was, to me, he thought bigger. He was like, how do I get more black readers and/or readers outside the standard white readership? I'm not hating on Priest. He was looking at things they way they were and working within those confines, but Hudlin, coming from outside the system, with skill in attracting black audiences, brought a different perspective into it and for a while it netted results. Now Coates, I'm curious to see who he is appealing to. I'm guessing white liberals, perhaps some gays, and eventually maybe even some black feminists. So in a way he is like Hudlin, in seeking out new audiences, though it remains to be seen if these new readers will stick around in large enough numbers over time.
