The Simplistic Anti-Racism of The Sandman Netflix Show
Jul. 31st, 2025 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiNote: This post is about the work, not the author. The author is relevant to the work, but this post is about something other than his actions and their gender implications in the work. I mostly discuss the show but reference the graphic novels. I like the show overall a lot and will discuss that more in another post; this one is just about race.
As was typical of the 1990s, the Sandman graphic novels are pretty white. For their time, they’re not clueless about showing racial diversity, but their handling of race needed updating for the show. Unfortunately, the show’s attempts to be anti-racist strike me as simplistic. Their approach is to take several characters who were white and cast them with Black people. That’s it; that’s the whole approach. This misses two crucial points about race:
1) There are more races than white and Black.
2) Systemic white supremacy is not just about centering white people; it’s about centering white culture.
General Spoilers for Season 2 and the graphic novel equivalent follow( Read more... )
As was typical of the 1990s, the Sandman graphic novels are pretty white. For their time, they’re not clueless about showing racial diversity, but their handling of race needed updating for the show. Unfortunately, the show’s attempts to be anti-racist strike me as simplistic. Their approach is to take several characters who were white and cast them with Black people. That’s it; that’s the whole approach. This misses two crucial points about race:
1) There are more races than white and Black.
2) Systemic white supremacy is not just about centering white people; it’s about centering white culture.
General Spoilers for Season 2 and the graphic novel equivalent follow( Read more... )
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}