I once saw someone complain about the color of Cassandraâs eyes in Wayne Family Adventures, and blamed it on âcolorism.â And that just annoyed me because one, her eyes were colored dark gray, I thought they were meant to be black, and two, Cass is half-white. Sheâs mixed. And as a mixed guy who looks more white than Asian it annoys me when people decry having ANY features from the white parent as âcolorismâ or âracismâ on the part of artists. Cass is already pretty obviously Asian. Mixed kids exist too!
This also goes for some of the discourse on Damian. Yes, he should get features from his mom. Yes, lots of artists are weird about drawing him. Yes, he can still be lighter than Talia and itâs not racist.
Since a big chunk of the "Batfamily" fanbase is in the USA (or since the comics originate from the USA) a lot of the ways race is dealt with (or simply ignored) is through how race is perceived in USA society.
A lot of the time, people simply refuse to acknowledge that it's possible to hold features from multiple ethnic backgrounds because they want to lean hard on just a single one of those identities.
In terms of eye color and skin color, that is definitely variable in many ways. You can have an epicanthic fold and still have "colored" eyes. You can be of Arab-Chinese (like Damian is from his mother's side) descent and have an overall light skin-tone. The opposite is also true. You can still be mixed, and have features that people would consider average or normal for certain ethnic backgrounds.
Considering how popular Cass and Damian are, it is understandable that people want them to have certain ethnic features because the representation for those ethnic backgrounds are typically negative, stereotyped or nonexistent (at least in perspective of the USA).
I think with Damian's character specifically, it has more to do with the negative, racist and stereotypical ways Talia is often portrayed. Talia in many of her appearances is the definition of The Dragon Lady stereotype. A femme fatale, self-centered and motivated only by her own goals. Damian's character in that way, is perhaps meant to somehow remedy these faults. Either way, since he's a comic character and not real, there is no set depiction of him that fully confirms what physical genes he's inherited from either parents.
As for Cass, a lot of Eurasians in the USA with a parent whose ethnic background is Anglo-Saxon or Germanic (like David Cain whose nationality is American and thus, most likely of either of those descents) tend to inherit less color based characteristics from their (usually western) European descent parent and more physiognomical features (such as eye shape, usually having a weaker epicanthic fold or nose shape, having a higher nose bridge). Inheriting "colored" eyes is less likely but DEFINITELY not impossible. It all depends on where your parents are ethnically from and how your genes end up recombining.
Now, all that being said, positive representation in the USA of Asian people is still hard to come by, so it is natural for a lot of folks to want characters to have features more typical of fully ethnic Asians. However, everyone deserves to see themselves in a character and the dynamics of mixed features shouldn't be ignored. Unfortunately, the balancing act is difficult to manage and no matter what you do, you'll still have people made at you one way or another.
This was way more detailed than probably intended the stupidly expensive education I paid for was begging to be used at least a little.
