You seem to know a lot about Dick, so here's my question: Is Dick Grayson Romani? Now, this is something at least FIVE people bullied me for on Twitter and it was horrifying. What I said was that bringing people down because they thought Dick was white is horrible because: a. DC doesn't give two fucks about him being Romani and b. They draw him white as a loaf of bread because of a. And they called me a racist for this. I am, by the way, a real PoC who lives in Middle East. +
+ I also said something like “Matt Bomer” could play him (even though it’s not a good fancast imo) or that I understood why people immediately cast Matt Bomer as him. This has been bugging me for a while because they were really, really mean and I want to know if I’m missing something here. For all I know, Dick Grayson is a white male who’s mostly drawn identical to Bruce (looks more like him than his son) that was written as Romani in some issues because: circus = Romani. which is toxic.
Welcome to the fandom. The irony is that most PoC I talk to feel the same way as you. I feel that Dick Grayson is for all intents and purposes a white character. I’ve covered it extensively in [this post]. The truth is, Dick Grayson only has 5 or so comics that really focus on him being “Romani,” and in all of these comics, it’s approached with A) harmful stereotypes and B) Dick being ignorant of the culture himself.
Dick could still be part Romani, but considering he’s treated as a white character inside comics and outside comics, he’s white passing if anything. It’s common in the United States to have diverse ancestry, yet to be ignorant of that ancestry and still have white privilege, which would describe Dick Grayson under this retcon with how he’s written. So no, I wouldn’t say he’s a PoC, and people who get self-righteous and bully other people over this really need to take five steps back and think about the implications of what they’re saying, because this attitude can be harmful to both PoC and PoC representation. Pushing white characters as PoC often distracts from the successes of real PoC characters. Until Dick is actually written from this culture’s perspective, we only have a handful of outdated racist comics to fall back on.
Since you mentioned the toxic “circus = Romani” trope, let me bring up a recent interview by Devin Grayson from [this book], since she’s the writer who made Dick Grayson part Romani.
Devin Grayson has the right idea when she says that “not assuming that all superheroes are white Europeans is important.” The problem is that her ignorance shines through everywhere else.
For starters, she’s admitting that she made Dick Romani due to this carnie trope, which she cites as “fictional evidence" and why she doesn’t consider her own retcon a retcon.
“In any case, I did a lot of research into both circus and Romani culture (which is how I came across that connection in the first place).”
Funny, because from all the research I’ve done about the Romani culture, I never came across this “circus” connection. The only time I ever came close was by specifically looking up Romani culture on Google with key words like “carnie” and “circus,” and even then, I’ve only found vague allusions and nothing concrete. Despite all of the “research” Devin Grayson said she did, the terminology she used within her comics was pretty offensive.
Devin Grayson then goes on to justify Dick as Romani through his “scrappiness,” through this “chip on his shoulder,” through his parents’ “occupation,” through Dick being “hot blooded” and she even refers to Dick’s economic status as a way to justify his “otherness.” She is validating Dick’s racial status through harmful and even racist stereotypes that this culture already faces frequently.
Devin Grayson then goes on to say that Dick’s racial status gives the people who “lust after him a potential cultural excuse for feeling bewitched” by him. Which is the icing on the cake. I’ve seen people, including myself, speculating for years that Devin Grayson only made Dick Romani because it’s ~exotic~ and here we have it straight from her. Dick being Romani is a cultural excuse for people to be bewitched by him and to lust after him. She’s reducing a culture to its sex appeal, which is incredibly ignorant and harmful.
Beyond all that, though, ignoring how inherently racist this entire thing is, Devin Grayson describes Dick as “someone who is white but other” meaning that even within the Romani retcon itself, Dick Grayson is not PoC. If you consider that [Dick is entirely ignorant of this culture], then there’s no reason to consider him anything other than white with some diverse ancestry.
Finally, Devin says,
“I don’t know that I’d say having a Romani superhero is important as much as I’d say not assuming that all white superheroes are Europeans is important.”
I agree with the sentiment being expressed here. It’s the only thing in this interview that I really think Devin got right. At the same time, the vibe I get from this sentence is that she doesn’t care about portraying the Romani culture itself. Dick could have been literally any minority race in order to give her that cultural excuse; it’s just that Romani worked the best, because that culture is already romanticized with circus culture.
This entire retcon has only ever been harmful to Romani people. The fact that Dick was only made Romani because of a circus stereotype and the exoticism and sex appeal it would give him leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I get that we want to promote diversity in comics, but this is not the kind of diversity we want. Dick Grayson was an exclusively white character until this retcon, but everything in his canon history that makes him “Romani” is steeped in racism and harmful stereotypes. I think the fandom needs to either push DC to properly represent Romani culture for once or else seriously consider letting this go.
