#white people seeing morally complex characters and thinking that unless a character is unconditionally good they must be white

[iphijaania]

while i’m here something that’s annoyed me recently in the tma fandom is this ‘[character] can’t be [bad thing] because they’re from an oppressed group!’ mentality

like with basira— ‘stop drawing her in a hijab/portraying her as muslim cos she’s a policewoman and policewomen are bad to women of colour!’ completely ignoring the fact that many, many, many hijabi women are members of the met police, with many more muslim women and muslims being part of the wider uk police force. it isn’t a rare phenomenon, and you can see multiple stories about muslim policewomen in the uk.

are they shitty? yeah.

do they still join? YEAH.

and, believe it or not, people from minority communities can be shitty people! like, see the recent bidders for the leader of the tory party in the uk— currently, the two lead candidates are a woman and an indian man. the top four candidates were a black woman, two white women, and an indian man. and the black woman was the one who got the backing of britain first, who are literal fascists and by far the most racist group in the uk. because guess what? she was racist!

kemi badenoch’s a black woman, yeah, but she’s also upper-class, rascist, misogynistic and homophobic. because those views are not mutually exclusive with her race.

i’m a pakistani muslim immigrant in the uk. almost the entire pakistani community where i live are tories. my flatmates at uni consisted of a nigerian immigrant, a singaporean and a malaysian— all with tory parents. idk about the usa but here, class plays a much bigger role in political view in the uk than race does, and there are a lot of rich people of colour looking to keep themselves rich. and yes there’s obviously a link between class and race, but at the same time literally the most ‘diverse’ cabinet of ministers came under boris johnson— multiple important government roles went to women, to people of colour, to women of colour, all of whom were also awful people looking to secure their own position and power.

why am i saying this? because helen being black and being a tory aren’t mutually exclusive. basira being a muslim/ a hijabi and being a police officer aren’t mutually exclusive. jude perry being asian (probably meaning south asian) and being a stock broker aren’t mutually exclusive. hell, elias being a person of colour (as some people choose to portray him as and get bashed for) and a rich classist dickhead aren’t mutually exclusive. because they, objectively, are bad people, and people of colour can be bad people!

i get it, tma has a problem with how it portrays race— almost all the characters are aracial sans the antagonists (and, arguably, basira). and said antagonists of colour never have their experiences explored in context of their race— see annabelle and her medical abuse, and oliver and his experience with homelessness and mental illness. but at the same time bashing fans for how they choose to portray characters is not it, especially because it tends to be white people with a very us-centric/ one-sided view on race and class.

this is very rambly and it comes as a result of several posts that’ve irked me because the race discourse is, in itself, very annoying. i might write more on this, but please stop shaming people for how they portray characters and saying that one portrayal of a character is ‘incorrect’ based on race grounds (‘helen can’t be black! she’s a tory!’).

people of colour can be bad people. get over it. stop policing everything for your own sense of self-righteousness.

sincerely, a brown uk-based tma fan