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

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

You might also remember that Professor X himself was closeted for *years* in the series, and lobbied as "Hi, I'm a non-mutant intellectual expert of mutants, and I say they should have rights." And the Xavier Institute was closeted for years as a "mutant school."
...yeah.

I'm also remembering the semi-retcon that people like Magneto and Mystique named the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" ironically, as sort of a, "you'll call us evil anyway, we'll thumb our noses at you while we do it, ooh we're so scary" thing.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

True on Xavier, and I really should have talked about that. Really, the whole "Professor X = MLK and Magneto = Malcolm X" thing is problematic anyway, and this just makes it moreso.

And yeah on the naming ironically, although it's hard to be ironic when you're leading a brotherhood of evil mutants and trying to conquer nations and engaging in the occasional act of nuclear terrorism. ;) Mostly the latter more than the former.

Also, that's a really cool icon. :)