Sam Wilson Captain America - Tumblr Posts

i’ve been having some fascinating talks about implicit bias and fandom lately (and implicit bias in fandom) and i only see this stuff really discussed in certain circles where the facts don’t need to be laid out, so i wanted to sort of break it down for anybody who hasn’t already seen somebody do this.

okay, so: to start. 

to be flippant, implicit bias is when you Do A Bigotry and you don’t even know it.

i’m gonna focus in on race here because i’ve got the perfect example, but for reference implicit bias covers a wide array of biases and assumptions made about any given group of people, usually thanks to cultural cues or training, etc.

back when falcon and the winter soldier first aired, something fucking fascinating happened.

because one of the things i will say the show did pretty well, especially early in the season, was portray a constant stream of microaggressions and instances of implicit bias aimed sam’s way. it was one of the reasons i broke a years long marvel break and actually bothered to check it out.

in the first episode, there’s a scene where sam and his sister sarah visit a bank and attempt to get a loan. the white teller recognizes sam but assumes it must be because he used to play college ball at lsu, when sam says he’s the falcon and turns on the shine to try and get this done the guy just goes ahead and takes a selfie without asking, there’s some pretty realistically uncomfortable ‘ah yes, my brother, i too am down!’ bullshit, he talks over sam a bunch and won’t let him talk about his plan for the business that would be a reason to give them a loan, then he acts like it’s sam’s fault being an avenger didn’t come with a paycheck and talks down to him about it in a million ways, acts like sam is a charity case and not a fuckin hero, and then is like well it’s just you see. you did not exist for five years, and you did not earn money during that time, and even though you qualify for a loan by the ‘old terms’ there are just so many more people now, sooooooo they just don’t seem like good candidates for the loan. not gonna happen.

sarah says she knows it’s about their race; the teller is REAL FUCKIN OFFENDED. he says ‘whoa, easy there, i’m on your side’ in a tone of voice i don’t think i need to describe much, because when a white guy tells a black woman anything that starts with ‘whoa, easy there’ (especially because she was like, okay well that’s racist though) it’s kinda obvious how he said it.

and then, because why not: he asks sam for another selfie, this time with sam posed differently because apparently that first one he took without asking permission was not good enough.

so: i went well jesus. that’s pretty blatant. woof, with the flood of racism. that was like a neon sign.

and then i went online. and to be clear: some people talked about the racism! but it was not a majority of fans.

there was one major category of response i found… somewhat frustrating, but very understandable nonetheless: a flood of canon-based ‘um, ACTUALLY’s about how tony (or pepper) would never forget to support the avengers, or how could tony what a dick, etc etc etc.

almost none of that seemed to mention the racism busting through every seam.

and, look: i’m a pedantic little fucker. back when i consumed comics i was an x-men kid, so this was not my canon rodeo enough to even start being pedantic, but i really do understand that urge.

however, that response missed the entire point of the scene— that sam and sarah live through the endless indignities of racism, that the teller rejected their offer despite the fact that their family had been using that bank for ‘generations’ and the teller knew it, and though he did not know it consciously, he did it because they were black.

which leads me to the second school of thought, and the one that is still pissing me off to this day, a little bit.

fans arguing: okay, but that wasn’t racist! he just denied the loan because there is so much going on. why would you say he was racist? he didn’t say anything racist.

this was so mainstream an opinion the creator of the show had to clarify on twitter: no, folks. that guy Did A Racism.

and i still see people arguing the point sometimes and saying he’s wrong! still! even though he created the show and wrote that fictional man into being!

to this day, there are an odd amount of people who want to argue it’s not racism unless it’s on purpose, and it’s also not really racism until somebody uses a racial slur.

which is… you know, just sort of empirically wrong, but also stealthily loops back around to reinforcing white supremacy.

because, okay, if racism only exists in the most horrible margins and we accept that definition, who does it benefit? who wins and who is actually in control, when we decide that until the hate is so blatant those who set cultural standards go: yep, they did a racism. i see it now, it doesn’t count?

the exact wording on who wins i will leave tactfully in subtext, but i will say this: implicit bias is one zillion percent racism, and part of the reason that kind of subtle racism is so hard to even start to talk about is because people can lean into ‘well maybe they didn’t MEAN that’ or ‘i just think you’re reading into it’ or ‘it’s not THAT bad’ or ‘it was just a mistake!’ etc etc etc into forever. 

basically: white supremacy’s second best tool right after violence is silence. that’s why ‘silence is violence’ is such a handy phrase. it’s snappy and it’s true. 

the floor is Sam Wilson