Sorry for the rant (and this is very very much from only my own perspective), but one of the only things I hate more than 'Duke is normal/crazy' posts is whenever someone makes a 'Duke hates a White Batboy' post that goes viral, there is a certain amount of surprise, anger, and vitriol from (some of) that White Batboy's fandom. The most recent example is Dick & Duke and the fallout from the Best Siblings poll, but this is NOT exclusive to the Dick fandom at all. I've seen posts/comments from some Bruce, Dick, Jason, and Tim fans all variously horrified at the mere idea that Duke could dislike/talk back to their fav. Those posts always assume that Duke disliking their fav means the OP is hating on their fav. While this is undoubtedly sometimes true, it is not always true, and it's getting to the point where it's frustrating to talk about Duke's relationships with ANYONE when people so heavily police how we're allowed to talk about Duke's relationships.
I am not talking about 'canon'. I have my own personal beliefs for whether Duke would like/dislike people based on comics, but this isn't about interpretation. It's about people being absolutely unwilling to entertain the idea that Duke could dislike a White Batfam member, that anything he says/does must be a reflection of either what the OP believes or what is 'morally correct'. Because there is a tendency to treat Duke as if he's an unassailable paragon of virtue and not a character with biases, personal history, and contradictions. To use an example, one post insinuated that Duke could never hate Dick for being a cop because Dick was 'trying to root out corruption'. Besides the fact that the post misconstrues what ACAB actually is, whether or not Dick was in the 'right' is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. Duke is not an all-knowing objective entity, he is a CHARACTER with a LIMITED PERSPECTIVE. He is ALLOWED to make judgements on characters whether or not they are 100% accurate, just like White characters can!
When someone reacts so strongly against the idea that Duke could dislike their fav, to me it reads like they cannot engage with Duke as a character with his own thoughts & feelings. That post btw also insinuated that canon!Duke is "smart" for liking Dick, which reveals the underlying belief that Duke is only worth something insofar as he makes their White fav look good. You see this in the recurring belief that Tim should be Duke's Robin - Duke draws no benefit from this headcanon, in fact his belief in Robinhood has to be butchered in order for this to work, yet this hc persists because it props Tim up. Same for some Jason fans who are extremely hostile to the idea of Duke disliking him (canon is ambivalent as to whether Duke likes Jason btw); same for that Bruce fan who, on a post that was simply about Duke holding Bruce accountable, stated that Duke was horrible because he was 'yelling'. AT AN ADULT.
Disallowing Duke any negative emotions, any grudges, is anti-Black. It shows an unwillingness to engage with Duke as a character in his own right. To be clear posts about Duke liking White Batfam members/disagreeing with other posts are welcome - I do it! A lot of Duke fans do it! But it is the viscerally angry reaction some people have with the possibility of Duke disliking their fav that I take issue with, as if Duke's anger is something incomprehensible, taboo. This is not limited to Duke, if the conversations around Cass & Jason are anything to go by. Isn't it interesting that it is always the character of colour who must be amenable? That in a fandom that purports to love 'messy' relationships, characters of colour are somehow not included?
NOT all fans of White Batfam members do this. A lot of Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph, and Bruce fans genuinely love Duke, appreciate him as a character, and defend him from these types of attacks as well. But this is a pattern, enough that it's clearly an underlying bias we must confront. Us comic fans are not magically less racist because we read the source material - we're not even less racist because we read a character of colour's comics. It is also the way we interact with, interpret, and talk about these characters, the allowances we give to White characters that we don't give to characters of colour. If we cannot engage with them as three-dimensional characters with thoughts and feelings separate from the admiration of White characters - if we cannot accept them being messy, antagonistic, or angry - then we have some serious introspection to do.
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