There's been an increased call for diversity in media. It doesn't matter if it's films, comics, awards, cartoons or whatever. People like to see themselves represented and for a lot of people, we feel as if we've gotten the short end of the stick. Some companies have made efforts to increase diversity under pressure. That's great, but sometimes they pat themselves on the back for their diversity. The problem comes when they pat themselves on the back for diversity that isn't really diversity.
Take for example Huff Po, formerly known as The Huffington Post. Liz Heron, one of the editors, posted a picture of pointing out their diverse staff. Problem is their diverse staff was all white women with a few Asian women sprinkled in for good measure. That's not real diversity. We complain that there's way too much emphasis on straight white guys, the answer isn't to fill the room with white women. Thinking like that is why Ida B. Wells had to force her way into women's suffrage marches because they didn't want black women marching with them. That just isn't real diversity.
Another way people falsely commit to diversity is seemingly putting forth a good effort, only to erase it all in a few brief moments. Take for instance Marvel comics that rolled out major changes to their characters. Thor was now a woman named Jane Foster, Riri Williams, a young black black was taking the role of Ironman. Amadeus Cho a young Asian Man was taking the role of Hulk and most notably Sam Wilson a black man, had taken the role of Captain America. That didn't go well, and Marvel's Vice President of Sales, David Gabriel, blamed diversity for poor sales stating:
What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against.Who exactly were those people complaining about a lack of diversity? It was comic book shop owners who complained the books weren't selling during a conference with Marvel's top 300 sellers. In reality, they weren't placing orders for these books because they didn't expect them to sell so there were constant shortages. Despite that, there were still some loudly pointing out the fact that the new lineup had brought new readers to the shop. It wasn't diversity killing the stores but the stereotypical "real comic fans," who didn't like change.
Couple that with the fact a lot of people purchase digital issues now, but not all books were made available digitally. For example, I wanted to read the new Ghost Rider, the problem was it wasn't available digitally until after the book was cancelled at which point you had to buy the whole volume or nothing at all. Add in the constant reboots and constant events it was hard for people to keep up sometimes. They sabotaged themselves and blamed diversity. Now those new characters are vanishing left and right. Hiring a white man who pretended to be Asian so he could sell more stories to Marvel in their diverse writers initiative as editor and chief is not diversity especially when people have been chasing that story since 2006.
That's where Milestone comics comes in. Milestone was a world that featured true diversity in their universe. People look at Milestone as comics only about black people and that just isn't true. Milestone had heroes that young and old, male and female, but so does every company. They excelled because they had a character that fit into just about any box. It didn't matter if you were a gay man, a transwoman, an Asian man, black woman or whatever, there was a Milestone character like you out there.
They also didn't pat themselves on the back about it. They were just making good comics that look the world outside your window. Dakota looks like any major city in the country. It's like when you watch shows like Friends and Seinfeld but they don't have any black friends and they're in New York. It's like how some writers will have you wondering why Gotham is so white at times. Does everyone else just take vacations at the same time.
Milestone was a shining beacon of what diversity should look like. They didn't exclude anyone. They managed to touch on issues facing people that are often overlooked. They provided a voice to the voiceless. They did all this without patting themselves on the back about how great they were doing. Milestone Media is one place that really got it.
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