WARNING: MOD PINK IS AN ARTIST WHO LOVES GARNET AND WISHES THE OP WOULD TRY IT
What absolutely kills me about all of this besides the fact that the artist is basically a bigot and very proud of that fact is that they truly don’t understand that what they have done is not only racist and morally repugnant, but how it contradicts their stance on censorship.
Obviously, this is whitewashed art of Garnet. We don’t have to get into the history of anti-black racism to explain why this is disgusting: we can just look at it and see. I think the fact that this art is of Garnet rather than any other Steven Universe character says a lot about the artists’ choices to be honest.
Unlike some of the other gems on the show, Garnet is unmistakably black-coded. She is voiced by a black woman, she has an afro, as well as brown/dark skin. The fact that the artist would target this character out of all the others in the show for this particular “demonstration” is too deliberate to simply be a preference or a stance for “integrity”.
Obviously the artist was trying to say something with this work and they succeeded: they whitewashed a black-coded character so that they could fight back against progressiveness. Like I mentioned before, the artist is proud in their bigotry and this art is the blaring evidence of it. They picked (for all intents and purposes) a black character, whitewashed her, and then tried to act as if any criticism against it would be “censorship” or “bullying”. Had they picked say, Pearl, Peridot, or Lapis (characters that can racially be interpreted in a lot of ways), this probably wouldn’t have been an issue. But no. The artist decides to pick this character to prove to all of us that censorship is bad. It’s actually funny because the artist simultaneously plays the victim as well as the aggressor/oppressor.
And about censorship. Look, I an understand people putting constraints about what you can and cannot express in your art. You do eventually have to do what you love regardless. But this is not standing up to censorship. This is thinly veiled racism and an act of violence. The reason I say this is violence is because whitewashing is erasure; essentially stripping away an identity and making it more “pleasing” or “palatable” (i.e., white). This is also violence considering what Garnet means to a lot of us in the Steven Universe fandom, especially those of us in the fandom who are black as well as identify femininely. The fact that the artist would remove the character’s blackness, make them white, and then try to pass it off as “standing up for artists” is thinly veiled anti-black racism.
Finally, I want to comment on this apparent “stance” the artist has. The artist’s comment, it’s very vague; they never really say what they’re fighting against other than “censorship” and “bullying”. What’s being censored when you draw Garnet as canonically black? What’s the point in white washing her? Is it because the artist cannot feel connected to her unless she were of the same race? Is it because Garnet being deliberately black-coded makes the artist uncomfortable? Is it because somehow making Garnet white speaks to some greater “truth” in their mind about how things should be? Is it because artists not actively whitewashing characters of color is some sort of “censorship” to the artist? I wouldn’t be surprised if any of these were true.
TL;DR: What the artist did here is disgusting and their “standing up for artists against censorship and bullying” isn’t fooling anyone. The choice to whitewash Garnet of all characters is grossly deliberate and is extremely anti-black. I hope that this work continues to be met with the derision and scorn that it deserves.
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