Racism in the Hetalia Fandom
Honestly this has been a long time coming and I’m sorry for not stepping up sooner about it.
I’m glad everyone can collectively stand up to an obvious nazi but there is still a shit ton of casual racism that goes on in this fandom that needs to be addressed. Below are a few that are unfortunately pretty pervasive along with a brief explanation of why it’s bad and a link to a more in depth post on the subject if i could find one.
Making all the Asians related:
It may be tempting to say they’re all related because they’re part of the same “group” but that’s exactly why this is casually racist. Asians already face enough racism in the form of “all Asians look the same” and “aren’t you (a non-Chinese person) Chinese?”. This is basically a form of that. Since the Asians are usually taken to be related as a sibling of China (despite the use of sibling terms NOT always indicating relation in Asian cultures) , it plays into those same stereotypes and takes away the individual agency of those countries and basically boils them down to being related to China, and thus each other, in some way. Look, it’s not inherently bad to make them related, but if you aren’t making similar groups like the Nordics, Germanics, or former British colonies all related, you might want to sit down and examine why that is.
De-masculinization of Asians:
This is particularly a problem with ships involving China and Japan. It’s already a problem to woobify a character in a ship because it plays into gross seme/uke dynamics and fetishization of mlm relationships and is pretty darn homophobic and misogynistic because it implies someone in the relationship needs to be the “woman.” When you do it to the Asians specifically, you play into racist stereotypes of orientalism and exoticism around Asians that objectify them. If you headcanon them having a slighter frame that’s fine, but purposefully exaggerating size difference by making the non-white person of the ship super buff and manly and drawing the Asian super slender and curvy and pale is straight up fetishization. Discussion on this.
“The POC characters get less attention because they have less character development”
I often see this as an excuse when questioning why people never give POC characters attention despite publicly proclaiming how beautiful and awesome Seychelles is and how she deserves more love before they go back to writing headcanons on the Nordics and never mention her again. I apologize because I can’t find the original post (if you have it please link so I can give this person proper credit), but someone crunched the numbers and non-white characters had fewer appearances in fanfics than white characters PROPORTIONAL to their comic appearances. Even corrected for their fewer overall appearances in canon, non-white characters still appear FAR LESS in fan content than you would expect. The excuse that POC characters also have fewer appearances than white characters is also plain incorrect in some instances. China and Japan individually have more appearances than any single Nordic, and together have more appearances than ALL the Nordics combined. Want to guess who gets more attention from the fandom? Basically, your excuse that you can’t get into characters like China and Japan because “they appear less/have less development” is flimsy, casually racist, and simply falls flat because it’s plain NOT TRUE for some of these characters. I get that you like what you like and can’t really help it, but either stop using this as an excuse or stop skipping/skimming their comics when you’re reading and maybe you’ll find a reason to like them.
Replacing China with Canada in the Allies
So I need to tell you why replacing the only POC in a canonly established group with a FIFTH blonde white guy is bad? Apparently so, because when I mention this some person always comes out with “b-buh Canadian contributions to WW2!!” That’s cool, why not include Canada as an addition instead of straight up replacing China because the contributions of a western country apparently outweigh the millions of Chinese deaths and Chinese efforts in holding the Eastern front with Japan? (because who knew WW2 involved...idk, the WORLD instead of just Europe?)
This isn’t about individual tribe/nation OCs. This is about overarching “Native America” OCs that either attempt to represent all indigenous cultures in America simultaneously or just try to be the “main” representation of the collective tribes (like England as the UK, or Germania, are excuses I’ve seen). Frankly I don’t care what your reasoning is. Like making all the Asians related, trying to represent indigenous cultures with a single personification erases the individuality of the different groups and essential implies they are all similar enough to have a single personification which is incorrect. The Cherokee and the Navajo live very different lifestyles with entirely different languages and cultures. Not to mention, most Native America OCs I see use feathered headdress imagery which is native to the Plains tribes and was only allowed to be worn by specific individuals under very specific circumstances. It wasn’t just a pretty aesthetic thing like a lot of people want to think. Here are two in-depth discussions on this one.
Great, you have a Mexico OC! Do you refer to them as a “fence/border hopper”, portray them as a constant annoyance to America begging for money/looking for work, make them do drugs, or portray them as violent and thuggish? If so you are wrong and need to stop, because these stereotypes are all extremely racist in nature!
Making dark skinned characters scary/violent
This particularly applies to 2p America, Cuba, and Turkey, but easily applies to any other dark skinned character that may be portrayed this way. Making 2p America in particular a violent thug reinforces stereotypes of dark-skinned (primarily black) people as being violent and prone to crime. I shouldn’t need to explain to you why this is bad and particularly racist. Please look no further than the BLM movement, which is actively combatting this. I know @basement-prussia has done a post on this but I’m having trouble finding it.
I understand sometimes it’s easier to relate to a character of your own creation than a canon character, and that this is some people’s preferred way of interacting with canon. That is perfectly fine, but I implore you: when making an OC, please do your research. Hetalia is unique in that the characters represent a people or culture. Because of this, you can’t just make a self-insert and slap the name of a place on it and call it good. If your OC represents a place that might be prone to any of the issues mentioned above, you need to do your research and do your best to make your OC accurate to that place and not just a two dimensional, racist stereotype. This here is a good discussion of some do’s and don’t’s with regards to makin OCs and not making them racist.
This is not, by all means, a complete list or even a complete discussion of racist things that go on in this fandom, but they are things I see over and over again. If you feel called out by any of these, instead of arguing and making excuses, question why you do them and try to do better. It’s okay to realize you have done some of these and aim to fix it. It’s not okay to do these and reblog this arguing about why you should be able to do it and making excuses about your specific circumstance. That makes you part of the problem. Don’t be part of the problem.
I know I didn’t even come close to covering everything, so if anyone else has something to add I invite you to reblog with your own comments.
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