#i hate when i must address that perhaps i cannot operate as a person trauma free

[cowboysmp3]

intense trauma has u journalling for days straight about something normal happening

[weightlessribbons]

The politics of RWBY and its faunus subplot

I love RWBY but every time I think about its politics it gives me a goddamn migraine

disgustingly long post below

So the main conflict of the story is the mostly apolitical struggle against the Grimm, and the largest subplot is the WF arc and the theme of anti-faunus racism

But the show has nearly nothing to say on the subject. Its message is almost utterly vacant.

We have Blake at the start of the show disillusioned with the only civil rights organization in existence, which is also a genocidal terrorist operation (🤔🤔🤔), and is left directionless and without a real idea of what to do.[1] Oobleck asks her how her being a huntress will solve the racism thing and she can't answer him. Okay, that's something: we could have a character arc about her finding direction and deciding to Do Something to Solve Racism.

But when she gives her speech at the end of the WF arc, in Menagerie like four volumes later, she still doesn't know what to do about racism! She scarcely mentions racism at all; all she says with any conviction is that the faunus population in general fails to denounce Adam’s WF. It reminds me of similar rhetoric with regard to Muslims in the US: if you're not loud enough in your denunciations, it's your own fault if people lump you in with the terrorists. Never mind that such demands are never made in good faith and minorities are lumped in with the terrorists anyway. If you're being discriminated against, it's your fault for not being a good enough citizen, and if you were just of better moral character you wouldn't be marginalized. That's all in the way of a plan Blake offers: just be a good person, and the humans will give you your rights!

So that's the message: racism is bad. Also, murdering innocent civilians is bad. Be a good person.

So what does "being a good person" mean?

Well, we can guess. A theme prominent here is forgiveness: Blake forgives Ilia. Implicit: the faunus should forgive the humans.[2]

That's it: forgiveness. Not, you know, any sort of political organization, or any sort of demands for justice, or any overthrow or even reform of corrupt institutions. Just keep playing the game and things will get better. Also, be willing to risk your life for others, and for the unity of the Society, even if they hate you. It’s not fair, but it’s the only way things get better.[3][4]

But is it, really?

We see a similar theme earlier, in V3. At the end of the volume we have narration by Salem to the effect of "unity" and "trust" being the greatest strengths of humanity. The obvious reading is, then, that unity and trust are Good. The Best, in fact. But what does that mean, exactly?

Cinder's monologue gives us an idea. According to her, the people have placed too much faith in their public institutions. Their "guardians" are authoritarian, secretive, and fallible.

There it is, then. The text is clear: distrust of powerful public institutions only helps the forces of evil.[5] (Also, the only people expressing such distrust are foreign chaos agents bent on destroying our freedoms.)

If "you should trust the authorities” seems to contradict the racism theme mentioned earlier, it actually doesn't. Racism in RWBY is never portrayed as an institutional or systemic issue; it's usually called "hatred". This allows for the text to acknowledge racism as an important issue that is a problem of character, rather than of power[6], and therefore attempts to address it should not destabilize existing power structures. 

It’s no surprise, then, that racism, an ostensibly major theme, receives such scant attention. There's Weiss being racist, and Cardin being racist, the two things that receive more than a couple of lines on the topic. There's Blake's WF exposition that actually says very little about racism at all. There's a blink-and-you-miss-it "No Faunus" sign in a Mistral bar. There's Menagerie, some kind of faunus reservation, the nature of which is so vague it’s hard to say anything at all about it[7]. We get little attention to of (say) hiring or housing discrimination, or any other systemic racism; these are issues entirely foreign to the elite paramilitary children with whom the narrative is most concerned[8]. Again, racism presented as a character flaw, rather than a systemic issue of unjust power dynamics.

You can tell what a narrative cares about by what it emphasizes. The racism theme in the Vale arc is chiefly flavor for the hordes of faceless WF goons; the text doesn’t say anything worthwhile about racism itself. In the Mistral/Menagerie arc, the narrative is not about overcoming racism but about the recuperation of marginalized communities into the existing power structure in the name of unity and forgiveness.

What is lacking, I think, is any substantive or satisfying notion of justice. The text doesn’t give us any answer as to what should be done about racism, other than Be a Good Person, and that’s because racial justice simply isn’t that important to the narrative. Before solving a problem you must name it, and the text doesn’t. We have an entire racism/terrorism arc that manages to say nearly nothing on racism at all, because, as Blake says, the answer to the question of justice is complicated, and the text just doesn’t have the time.

[1]One funny thing to look at is Blake’s expository monologue to Sun in V1 about how the WF “turned dark”. The WF performed “organized attacks” by vandalizing discriminatory businesses and expropriating goods from corporations using “faunus labor”(does this mean slavery? or employees? that would be weird). It’s strange that these would be the things that forced her to leave; property crimes aren’t really a big deal compared to the killing of civilians depicted in the black trailer, which she for some reason doesn’t bring up. She says that it was working, and that human fear brought equality, but that such equality was bad since it wasn’t out of respect (and therefore would be fleeting). This is incredible in two ways. First: a government and populace that actually feared the WF would not bring equality, but rapid extermination (of the WF, that is). Fear doesn’t actually help unless you have power, and the WF seem to have no base of material or popular support and no praxis except insurrectionist violence[A]. Second: if it were somehow actually working, then why did Blake leave? What was the purpose of all this action, if not to attain power by making yourself a credible threat? Did you become a liberal out of nowhere? That she talks about property crime and “fear” instead of the killing of civilians is baffling. 

[2]Yes, I know that Blake wants them to specifically go to Haven and physically stop the WF. Yes, stopping a terrorist attack is good, even if these civilians aren't at all fit for purpose. But this doesn't itself help to stop racism, which is why I didn't mention it specifically above.

[3]This mirrors the confrontation between Yang and Raven wrt Salem and the relic.

[4]We do learn later that Blake wants a “new” WF. This means, presumably, that the WF will go back to peaceful protest. But that doesn’t come up in her speech, and no mention, of course, of how it would help them in achieving their goals, or even what those goals are, specifically, other than ending “hatred” in general. March to End Racism. What a visionary.

[5]Also, distrust, anger, and other “negative emotions” attract the Grimm. That’s like metaphysical tone policing right there.

[6]There’s backstory of faunus having been enslaved which would count as systemic racism, but it doesn’t come up later or really affect anything on-screen, and the text doesn’t portray it at enough length or depth to characterize it as such.

[7]Menagerie being crappy must be understood within a wider context: why live in Menagerie, if it sucks, instead of where everyone else lives? Not much attention given to why this happens (other than perhaps “individuals are racist”). And does Menagerie being crappy actually have any consequences? Like economically, or socially? We don’t see them.

[8]The times where it seems the text might make a systemic critique are Adam’s backstory and Atlas in general.  Adam’s trauma isn’t really remarked upon; he’s not a sympathetic figure.  We don’t know much about Atlas since that’s for next season, but limiting your systemic critique to the one racist place seems a bad way to do things. We’ll have to see how it goes.

[A] Also, it’s not clear when the WF moved from “property crime” to “kill all humans”(which is comically over-the-top), and no one remarks on it. It gives one the sense that the narrative sees property crime and genocide as equally objectionable.

[ADDENDUM] Some might object by way of noting that RWBY hasn’t taken us to Atlas yet, where the racism lives, and that the WF arc wasn’t primarily about racism, but terrorism, so one shouldn’t expect the theme of racism to be addressed before Atlas. The problem is, though, that the WF was ostensibly founded as a civil rights organization; you cannot meaningfully conclude an arc on the WF without addressing racism. For example, at the end of V5 says that she wants to build a “new” WF. What does this mean? We never find out, because it’s not that important.