Man, I leave my computer for a few hours to eat dinner and watch old Scooby-Doo episodes and come back see my feed blowing up with stuff about a Zutara anti comparing Zuko to the KKK.
I mean, I'm not entirely surprised an anti took it this far, especially considering this particular anti's history and how antis, in general, have been spamming the tag with stuff about how Zutara is colonizer apologism. Still, not how I expected my Friday to end.
But as someone whose family actively took a stance against the hate-group mentioned, as the daughter of a former civil rights lawyer, the granddaughter of a man who got death threats for hiring black people at his business, the great-granddaughter of a man who threw his younger brother out of his house and completely cut off contact with him for joining that hate group, and the several-greats-granddaughter of an outspokenly abolitionist Union soldier, I feel it is my duty to say that this anti can go fuck themself.
The KKK (or, as my dad calls them, "the Kluckers") is not some little prop for your virtue-signaling jokes about how much you hate a fictional ship. They were and are a very real danger. A terrorist group that was propped up by institutional and systemic racism, founded by men who were so bitter over the loss of their legal ability to own other human beings that they channeled their hatred into intimidating and killing black Americans and any progressive white Americans who tried to support black Americans' rights or push for reforms.
The Fire Nation is fictional. Their crimes and atrocities are part of a show for children. Zuko isn't real. He's simply a character who is meant to show that good can be found in unexpected places and that it is possible to break free of prejudices, extreme nationalism, and the cycle of abuse.
There is no excuse in my mind, not a single one, that could ever justify bringing real-world evil like the KKK, the Holocaust, or the disgusting crimes being committed against Iran and Palestine into a disagreement about fictional ships from a kids' show.
Those topics might be appropriate for a discussion on how the show handles things like genocide, racism, or colonialism, and then only if they are treated with the seriousness that they deserve, but it is beyond being in poor taste to use them as fodder in a shipping war.
I'm not normally one to jump into situations like this. I try not to meddle or let my anger get the best of me, but there are some things I simply cannot stay silent about. And this...this really got under my skin. I don't know if it's the recent surge of hate in the Zutara tag that's been building up my frustration and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back, or just that this particular "bad joke" hit an especially sore spot for me.
With how I was raised, the KKK were always the real-life boogeyman. Even being white, I grew up terrified of them. I was afraid that they might come out of the woodwork and kill my classmates or neighbors just because of their skin color. At school, when learning about the Civil Rights Movement, I saw old photos of them marching around in those stupid white hoods and felt sick when I saw one picture of a baby whose shithead parents had dressed him in that hateful outfit.
I have tried to avoid being an angry person. I believe anger is a dangerous thing, especially because of how addictive it is. So, I do my best to stay calm and civil and respectful, even when things make me upset. But there is something about the KKK and other white supremacists that triggers a gut reaction of rage and revulsion in me.
So, again, I say to the anti who so casually injected this genuinely horrific example of real-world hate, violence, and bigotry into a "joke" about a fictional character: FUCK YOU!
On a more positive note, I want everyone to be aware that January 18th is a special day of commemoration for the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. It honors the Battle of Hayes Pond, an event in which several hundred members of the Lumbee Tribe whooped ass on a gathering of KKK and got the entire hate group expelled from Robeson County and their leader, James "Catfish" Cole, arrested for inciting a riot.
