You don’t sound callous or insensitive at all! 🙂 And I don’t necessarily think that the authors were consciously or subconsciously being racist. I do wish, though, that someone had paused, looked at the way the story was going, and given it some consideration from the point of view of racial dynamics. Truthfully, the thing that bugged me by far the most was the Wilders’ past as petty thieves, and I’m sure that colored my reaction to their portrayal in the rest of the book.

As far as the rest of the book goes, what I would say is this: It’s incredibly easy, given the long and fraught history of racism in this country, to write something that plays into a stereotype with a tremendous amount of cultural and historical resonance. When you write a story and draw a picture of a huge black man murdering a poor helpless little white girl, those two people aren’t just your characters in service of a story you’re writing; they’re placed–like it or not–in a long history of racism, propaganda, and hysteria. I’m not saying nobody can ever write a story where a black guy kills a white girl; it’s just that if you’re going to write that story, it behooves you to be triple-extra careful with it, because there’s decades of emotion behind an image like that.

*climbs off soap box* :p

I didn’t connect the fact that the Wilders were more evil than the rest of them to the fact that they were black, but rather I thought that the reason that the Wilders were more evil than the rest of them was because they were the leaders. Of course he’s going to be the one knifing the girl at the beginning – he’s the leader. (The fact that the Wilders were the only criminals in their pre-Pride days is less defensible)

I think race is so sensitized an issue that a charge of racism could be leveled at the story no matter how the races of the characters were distributed. If the Wilders had been white and, say, the Steins had been black, then how come the black people are always the henchmen and never in charge? If the Deans had been black, does that mean that we’re identifying black people as aliens and therefore not really human? Etc.

I’m not saying that racism isn’t real or isn’t a problem in society, or that the perception of racism isn’t a valid reason for not enjoying a story. Just that I think racism can really easily be read into things where it wasn’t the author’s conscious or even subconscious intent, so I tend to give most stories the benefit of the doubt.

(Also, there are hints as the series progresses that there was more going on with Alex than we got to see in the first few volumes, just FYI.)

True story. And without even the excuse of being written Back in the Day, when everyone was racist. :p

I echo your 🙁 and affirm your discernment in not reading it.

Exactly. I felt much the same way with some of the episodes of Angel that dealt with race. It’s obvious the writers weren’t intending to be all stereotype-y and awkward, but God, I felt so awkward for them. I wished I had been around at the time to ask them to please stop being so awkward.

Well. I mean. I didn’t not like it. I thought the plot was really fun and cool! The book was certainly enjoyable! But there were elements that gave me pause and made it very difficult for me to enjoy the book on the merits of the plot and dialogue. *delicately avoids spoilers*

Yep. I was already a bit uneasy with having the huge black father be the one to knife the girl at the beginning, and then the other incidents seemed progressively more and more unacceptable.

And it was a good plot! And I doubt that the writers were in any way doing it on purpose. I just wish someone had leaned over their shoulders at some point during the development of the comic and said, Hey dude, you’ve given all the wickedness to the black characters. :/

I will be curious to see if you have the same response I did. My sister read this right before I did, and she didn’t feel the same. So it’s very possible I overreacted.

Well, apart from their being rather exoticized (that’s a word, right? Firefox thinks not), Nico and her parents were fine. You know, the parents were evil, but fine otherwise.