Another response to Why Spawn Isn't Black:

>> I would dispute this. <<

Naturally! <g>

>> Since Spawn appears in corporeal form and has African-American physical (and, in the animated version, vocal) characteristics, the perception of the reader/audience/other characters is that he's African-American. <<

When Spawn first appeared, I believe his body was decaying. If someone regenerated his body or he regenerated it himself, he basically became a new person.

What if the magic had generated a white body instead? Would that have made him white? I'd say yes: He'd be a white person who was black in a previous life.

In fact, I believe Spawn can change his shape to either a white or black form. I'd argue that a shapeshifter has no race, because one's shape is one's race. Spawn is black when he's in a black body and white when he's in a white body.

Fundamentally he's a racefree spirit or demon. All we can say is that he was black originally. Now he's any race he wants to be.

>> If he did not have any distinguishing characteristics, I doubt he'd have caught on. <<

If he didn't disguise his race with a full-body costume, I doubt he'd have caught on.

>> "Blade" (also a popular comics character) is also African-American (half-vampire, also, but that's a separate issue). <<

Sure, there are lots of black heroes and superheroes. I could list a few hundred of them. But Blade didn't have his own comic when I wrote that comment. Neither did Storm.

>> Storm in "X-Men" is black (not sure if she's meant to be *American* or not). <<

Most stories play up her African background, but she was born in America (ages 0 to 2 or 3) and raised in Egypt (ages 2 or 3 to 10 or 12). If childhood ends at 18, she probably spent less than half her childhood in black Africa.

>> Casper is perceived as white, and not just 'cause he's drawn that way. :) <<

Yes, but the point of my essay is to dispute the common perception. Suppose the movie had shown Casper as a little black boy in life. Would that have violated the Casper "canon"? Only in people's minds, I think.

>> I'm not sure *how* people would react to Casper being black pre-death. <<

I don't know either, but I'm guessing it would be controversial.

>> I'm not sure we ever *see* him pre-death until that dippy live-action movie <<

I think you're right about that.

>> I could be wrong about this, but I've been told by several people involved with the "Blade" films *and* in the film's production notes that Blade is a comic book hero <<

He is, but 1) I'd call him a hero, not a superhero, and 2) I think his comic was canceled.

>> I got the impression that it's *his* comic <<

Yes, it is, or was.

>> Since I know "Spawn" and "Blade" just about exclusively from the live-action feature films, where they are played by African-American actors, and since we see Spawn as his living self, I would say they are African-American characters. <<

I explained my reasoning if Spawn died and his body decayed. If he got a new body, it's a magical artifice. It could be a body of any race. I believe the comics have proved the point by showing Spawn shape-shifting into a white man.

>> Spawn is in effect the ghost of an African-American man — whether a ghost (a non-corporeal being) can have ethnicity at all is a whole other question <<

I'd say it's the same question and a relevant one, as I implied with my Casper analogy.

>> Spawn is certainly *initially* African-American. <<

Right. He was black when he was alive.

If you don't like my Casper question, how about this? Just before he dies, a black man transfers his mind into a robot using an electronic process—i.e., pure energy. The robot contains his thoughts and feelings but not an atom of his physical body. What race is the robot? Is the robot a black robot? What race was the robot before the mental transfer?

>> However, in the movie, every time he spoke, his voice identified his ethnic background. The actor — is it Michael Jai White? amnesia has set in! — has a very distinctive voice. Not all African-American men, by any stretch, have that accent, but I haven't heard any man who *isn't* African-American speak in those tones <<

I understand your point. My questions are: 1) Were his vocal cords recreated magically the way his body was, or are they his original vocal cords? 2) Is this "black" accent a product of biology or of cultural training? If it's the latter, Spawn is speaking like a black man, not as a black man.

>> I haven't seen the comic book — if he spends his entire time encased in the costume, then I guess his ethnicity wouldn't strike the readers one way or the other <<

I've only seen a few issues of the comic. It's not that good. <g> We mostly see Spawn in his full-body costume, but occasionally he rips off his mask to reveal his decaying corpse appearance.

As one website written by someone more knowledgeable than me put it:

So if Spawn remains half-decayed, you could argue he retains some of his original Negroid traits. If he's completely decayed, I think he's pretty much lost his ethnicity. If he starts mutating into another shape, I'd say he's definitely lost his ethnicity. If he mutates back into a black man at some point, I'd say that's irrelevant, unless the new form is permanent. I don't believe it is.

To use yet another example, suppose the Devil or a demon comes to earth as Brad Pitt. Does that make him a white Devil or demon? Or does he just appear white?

Of course you could argue that Spawn was black physically and remains black culturally, and I'd agree with that. I'm just saying that if you take a hunk of protoplasm—or a skeleton, ghost, or robot—you can't assign a race to it scientifically. Race is a social distinction, not a biological one.

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