Asking for a black woman to be a hero is a fine idea. Many threads have popped up about this topic recently. However, I’ve come to notice that many of these people just want one “because there isn’t one yet”, and I feel like this comes back to the topic that I made a thread on recently:
“Is this asking for representation, or ticking boxes?”
An example of this is this thread:
No hate or shame to the OP. They are entitled to their opinion and their outlook. They bring up a point in that thread, saying “people of color don’t need to justify their existence.”
And that’s totally true! But I just think that asking for one because there “aren’t any yet” leans more on the side of ticking boxes than actually calling for representation. If people wanted a Black woman from X country that represented the culture there, that’s totally cool. But people asking for a black woman as a hero just because she’s a black woman seems to me that these people just want to be ticking boxes (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, nor am I saying that is 100% what they’re doing.)
My point here is this. While it is surprising there isn’t a black woman as a hero yet, I don’t think we should be calling for one for that reason alone. Cultural representation through a black woman would be much more rich and deep and positive for the game and its message than just slapping a black woman into the game for the sake of it.
I mean, i want a hot asian female ninja style waifu hero because there isn’t one yet so i understand where they come from lol. i just get mad because black people are seen different across all parts of the world, i don’t mean racism or anything, but in my country we say someone is black based on their skin color and not their origins and i’m sure a lot of countries are like that. In brazils vision, Ana, Sym and Pharah are all black women but for people here it is not and it confuses the hell out of me.
What irks me the most about this whole things is that it often appears so arbitrary what does or doesn’t count for a black woman.
Like, where do you draw the line for ‘black’ in terms of skin tone? We already have several women with a darker-than-white skin tone in Ana, Pharah, Sombra and Symmetra. I get that they’re not ‘black’ enough to count as black, but from where does it then? Like, if we look at the men, Baptiste, Lucio, Doomfist and Reaper. Where do you draw the line for ‘black’?
Then there’s also the matter of nationality. We’re getting a clearly black woman in Sojourn with OW2, but apparently she doesn’t count either because she’s Canadian?
Or the case of Orisa. She’s clearly modelled after a black woman both culturally and vocally, but all that doesn’t matter because she’s a robot centaur instead of looking like a black woman. And this makes me wonder whether people actually care about cultural representation and not just about the more superficial visual representation and, like you say, ticking boxes.
For the love of god, take a geography class! Just because they arent as light as a paper bag it doesnt make them black! thats ignorance right there. Sym is indian aka asian, and Pharah and Ana are both arab/Egyptian. Skin tone has nothing to do with determining how “black” you are but the physical characteristics and ancestry. Stop grouping every non- Caucasian as black…
Sojourn is the first black woman this game has had, lucio, bap, doomfist and reaper are all black with different nationalities. Again, skin tone=/= does not mean they’re instantly black.
hes afro latino? you do not that mexican is a nationality not a race…and he clearly has the physical characteristics, do i really need to tell you the difference between nationality, ethnicity and race?
wait a minute i thought reaper was hispanic? gabriel rayes a decorated mexican american soldier from los angelas? well he use to be decorated as a soldier now hes some sort of freakish saturday morning cartoon villian…
We already have some heroes with little to no story or lore. Let blizz make stuff they actually have plans for. If that happens to be what you want represented, then even bettter. We should not encourage them to just tick boxes though, it’s bad for the game in the long run.
