X-Men and Civil Rights

[lisaquestions]

So I was thinking, earlier:

The X-Men comic book series started in 1963, featuring Professor Xavier and his five students, trying to show the world that mutants were just like everyone else by training them to be superheroes so they could fight other mutants. Specifically, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by Erik Magnus Lensherr, aka Magneto (although I don't think he got a real name until much later). When humans spotted mutants, as seen in the first issue, they'd almost immediately form a mob and start attacking the mutant with whatever came to hand. I can only imagine how many times Stan Lee imagined that scene playing out and ending with a dead mutant, since most mutants at the time weren't really all that powerful - and most only had one or two powers, otherwise being fairly normal people.

The X-Men debuted the same year that Martin Luther King led a peaceful protest against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote the famous letter from a Birmingham Jail. The next year, three black civil rights workers were murdered by Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

So this is the political environment that the X-Men are born in - the black civil rights movement and violence directed at it. As they mature, the gay rights movement and second wave feminism get started.

So: Why, during all this actual activism, do mutants spend so much of their time kicking each other's asses? Why does the militant, violent faction call itself the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?" Why does Professor Xavier feel that the best way to win acceptance for mutants is to train them to fight other mutants? Why don't mutants have a Stonewall?

This isn't really intended to be a criticism - comic books weren't really all that great at social relevance at the time. It's more, "what social forces would drive mutants in the midst of being massively persecuted to turn on each other and not take any cues from the civil rights struggles going on around them?"

Yes, I am a geek. I wear that label with pride.

Edit to clarify: I'm not criticizing the comic books or asserting they should have been written differently. I'm just asking: "Look at the history of civil rights. What would it look like to put the X-Men into that context on a political level?"

Also, read this page for an article highly relevant to this post.

Comments

[homo-impetus.livejournal.com]

You can look at any alternate reality available so far to decide what it would look like.
M-day brought us what the world would look like if Mags won.
Age of Apocalypse brought us what it would look like if he had won.
Grant Morrison's future visions in New X-Men or the mini-series X-Men:The End give us yet another story.

Any Exiles arc has some interesting tidbit in it of the possibilities.

Although honestly the issue that I mention of the X-factor Layla Miller special is one of the first times I have seen things put together so well.
I love Layla though, so I could just be biased.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

I don't mean the outcome, I'm fascinated by the story ideas that come from showing the process.

I also wonder about characters who have seen the future (Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers) in Days of Future Past, and how much energy they'd put into preventing that, spreading the word about it so people know that "things are going to hell and we need to do something about it" and what that would mean.

And yes, it seems far-fetched, but hey, telepaths nearly everywhere might help with the convincing.

And yes, The End was one of the reasons I started thinking about this stuff. I haven't read Grant Morrison's future X-Men materials, though.

[homo-impetus.livejournal.com]

Kitty would do anything.

Do you remember when Doug died and the speech she gave at his funeral?
That changed my life. I think I was like 10 or 11 or something.

You should write some fanfic about what you mean. I think this is the first time I have actually said that, so this moment is monumental. I am going to stick a flag in it.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

I agree - Kitty would but I didn't see much talk of it. IIRC, Rachel didn't talk much at all about her future experiences.

And yes, I remember when Doug died! :(

I hadn't thought of fanfic, to be honest, but it might be worth trying out. It'd be writing something, at least.

[homo-impetus.livejournal.com]

Kitty talks of it randomly and in small ways. I think the most she mentions it are in The End when she is running for political office (mayor of Chicago if I remember correctly).

All of my older comics are in storage across the country from me, or else I would try to find the issue I am talking about.
Kitty's speech at his funeral was and is to me still one of the most moving pieces of writing in comics.
The memory of it is anyway. I could reread it and think it was tripe, but I think that is actually an unlikely scenario.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Actually, hmm...was past Kitty in future Kate's body unconscious for a lot of it?

[drakyn.livejournal.com]

This is why I love fanfiction. I haven't read much xmen, but there is definitely this sort of story in HP; agitating for muggleborn/house-elf/werewolf/etc rights.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

True that.

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

Sort of. House of M brought us 'if Magneto won without having been opposed in the first place.' As much as he's a distraction for the Xavier crew, they're a distraction for him, and we see that left to his own devices, while he's set up a society where non-mutants are second-class, it's largely a peaceful society and he functions as a generally nonviolent quasi-dictator who by and large leaves nations sovereign-but-heavily-influenced, like satrapies rather than colonies or subject states.
Age of Apocalypse posits the war happening anyway, and Magneto being opposed by those who're worse, but House of M basically posits that the war ended without firing a shot.

I was just reminded of the Exiles arc with Uberdictator Tony Stark...